During the rise of the so-called Daesh* “caliphate”, Sweden emerged as one of Europe's premier “producers” of jihadists per capita. While notoriously lax at prosecuting returnees for crimes committed in warzones, Sweden also struggles to locate all of its “Daesh children”, let alone repatriate them.
The United Nations has urged Sweden to immediately bring home its citizens who are in internment camps in northern Syria.
According to UN spokesperson on terrorism Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Sweden has together with 56 other member states ended up on the body's “shame list” for failing to follow international law.
“This is not a list you want to be on. You should be actively working to get away from the list”, Fionnuala Ni Aolain told national broadcaster SVT.
According to Ni Aolain, Sweden has failed to meet the organisation's requirements.
Ni Aolain compared the conditions in the Al Hol and Roj internment camps in Rojava in north-eastern Syria to Guantanamo Bay, a US military prison notorious for cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of inmates.
All in all, both camps contain about 64,000 women and children with links to Daesh.
Sweden has previously made several attempts to bring back its children from camps in Syria. A child who has a parent with Swedish citizenship automatically becomes a Swedish citizen as well, regardless of where in the world it is born. However, a large proportion of the…
