Suspected Dutch ISIS financier released on parole after year in jail
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A convicted member of a terrorist group accused of helping women escape detention camps in northeast Syria has been released on parole in the Netherlands after spending nearly a year in pre-trial detention, Dutch media reported.
Samir A., who was released on Thursday, previously served two-thirds of a 7-year sentence for plotting attacks in the Netherlands as part of the notorious Hofstad jihadist group. He was later arrested for terrorism financing after the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) accused him of helping women linked to ISIS escape from camps in Syria.
The 35-year-old, whose last name is not published in Dutch media, claimed he wanted to prevent mothers and children in al-Hol and al-Roj camps from suffering, reports the Telegraaf.
“I wonder if we should let the children die because their mothers are on a terrorist list. I disagree with this and I think it's wrong that the OM after one year now accuses me of membership of a terrorist organization,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Samir said he did not feel “connected” to ISIS but endorsed “some of their ideologies,” according to the report.
His lawyer, Tamara Buruma, argued that freeing the women from camps in Syria was not illegal, and argued that her client did what the Dutch state refused to do: to bring women and children out of the dangerous camps into safety.
Samir stands accused of helping 27 children and 10 women escape. A number of them have reportedly returned to Europe, while others remain in Syria in Idlib province, which is under control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group formerly known as al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
The Dutch government has previously admitted that 15 Dutch women with alleged ties to ISIS have escaped from camps in northeast Syria in the last few years.
Earlier this month a court gave the government a hard deadline of three months to repatriate five Dutch women with links to the terrorist group. Last month a woman identified as Ilham B., her two children, and another orphaned minor were brought back to the Netherlands from Syria.
It is now expected the other women and any children they have will be repatriated in the near future.
Both Belgium and Finland brought back ISIS-linked women and children from the camps on Friday.
The civilian administration in Kurdish-held northeast Syria has publicly pressed Western governments to repatriate their nationals from the notorious camps, citing overcrowding and security concerns. Many have been in al-Hol or al-Roj since the fall of the so-called Islamic State in March 2019 and violence is rampant.