Finland on Sunday (December 20) repatriated six children and two mothers of Finnish nationality from the Kurdish-controlled Al-Hol detention camp in northeastern Syria in a joint operation with Germany which, for its part, brought back fifteen mothers and children.
This is the first time that Helsinki has authorized the repatriation of adults, two women who had joined jihadist zones between 2013 and 2014. They are now in the hands of social services and will be monitored by the services. of security.
The news is controversial in Finland. Conservative (opposition) party officials criticized “The government’s new line of repatriating jihadists” and demanded that he justify his decision, while a representative of the populist True Finns party accused him of lies and cover-up.
As elsewhere in the world, the controversy is not new. After intense debate, the government adopted just a year ago a list of ten principles relating to the repatriation of Finnish children. Point 6 specifies that the government aims to help children, but has no obligation to do so for adults who have voluntarily traveled to the region.
“They would come back to Finland sooner or later”
Since then, two supposed orphans have been brought back by the authorities while four women with children have returned, but on their own.
For Jussi Tanner, the envoy of the ministry in charge of the file since the beginning of the year, and for whom it was the first repatriation decision, it was the least bad solution. Finland, Tanner said, has a legal obligation to bring these children back, knowing that their basic rights could not be guaranteed in the camp, and that it was impossible to bring them back without their mother, as much as legal view than practical.
In addition, he argued, “Finnish citizens will always have the possibility of returning to the country”. “They would come back to Finland sooner or later. In five, ten or fifteen years, in adulthood for the children. The whole camp is a security risk. It is not known when it will collapse and they will start to scatter. There, in Finland we have the choice on the action to be taken ”, noted Jussi Tanner to justify the decision not to let the situation drag on any longer, arguing that the more time passes, the more the risks of radicalization increase in the environment of the camp where neither education nor protection can be provided.
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