Senior Conservative MPs are campaigning for the return of British Islamic State brides and their children from Kurdish detention camps, arguing that some are victims of trafficking.
The former cabinet ministers Andrew Mitchell and David Davis and Commons committee chairmen Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood wrote to ministers demanding urgent action. There are estimated to be about 3,000 foreign citizens held in prison camps in northeast Syria. Fewer than 40 of these are thought to be British, the “vast majority” of whom are women and young children, the MPs said.
“We are concerned that their current indefinite detention in increasingly precarious Kurdish detention camps poses a significant security challenge to the UK, as well as significant harm to the children involved,” they told the attorney-general, foreign secretary and home secretary in a letter which has been seen by The Times.
“We urge you to ensure that these individuals are brought back to the UK so that any adults accused of crimes can be fairly prosecuted with due process, and the children’s safety is ensured.”
The British government has so far barred the return of Isis brides and their children from Syria because of security concerns. This month the Court of Appeal ruled that the east London schoolgirl Shamima Begum, who married an Isis fighter in Raqqa, should be allowed home to challenge the removal of her UK citizenship.
The Tory MPs said that information collated by Reprieve, the human rights and legal action charity, showed that many of the imprisoned British women had not travelled to Syria of their own volition. The complicated dynamics of their situation — potentially having criminal charges to answer, as well as being victims of trafficking and gender-based violence — are best dealt with by the British authorities, the MPs argued.
Reprieve said one of the women was a young carer who had been targeted on a dating website by predators who preyed on vulnerable Muslim girls. There had also been cases in which girls as young as 12 were trafficked to Syria and girls as young as 14 were forced to marry adult Isis fighters.
