Dutch woman jailed on Syria terrorism charges

Woman jailed in Netherlands for 'taking part in terrorist organisations and preparing crimes'

Women and children at Al Roj detention camp in Syria's north-eastern Hasakah province, on March 28, 2021. AFP

The first woman to be taken home from Syria to stand trial in the Netherlands on Wednesday received a prison sentence of three and a half years for joining ISIS.

The woman, identified only as Ilham B, 28, was repatriated last year from Al Roj detention camp in north-east Syria after she joined ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusra militants with her husband in 2013.

Rotterdam District Court said Ilham B was "sentenced to 42 months in jail of which were 12 suspended, for taking part in terrorist organisations and preparing various crimes".

"The court is satisfied she participated in Syria in the IS and Jabhat Al Nusra terrorist organisations," it said.

Prosecutors, who demanded an eight-year sentence, said Ilham B also sent out extremist propaganda on social media and carried guns during her time in Syria.

The judges rejected her defence that she "lived in a bubble in Syria and did not know what was going on".

They said there were "ample sources of information she could have consulted, the length of her stay, her husband's function and the content of her online messages".

Ilham B, from the western Dutch city of Gouda, left the Netherlands in September 2013 to travel to Syria through Turkey, court papers said.

Ghufran, 56, the mother of Zakaria Al Adl, a member of ISIS killed in Iraq, wipes her tears during an interview in her house in Tripoli's Bab al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood. Dozens of young men from Tripoli, Lebanon's poorest city, are believed to have recently joined ISIS. All photos: AFP

Lebanese men smoke water pipes as they take a break outside their workshop in an alley of Tripoli's impoverished neighbourhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh.

Since August, dozens of young men have disappeared from Tripoli, which has been especially hard hit by the country's financial crash.

Mechanics repair a car in an alley in Bab al-Tabbane.

Tripoli's neighbourhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen. Even before the 2019 onset of Lebanon's financial crisis, Lebanon's second city was widely seen as a volatile militant bastion.

Ghufran, the mother of Zakaria Al Adl, a member of ISIS killed in Iraq, talks as one of her sons shows a photo of his brother during an interview in her house.

The mother of Omar Seif, who disappeared from the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli's neighbourhood of Wadi Al Nahle, cries during an interview held weeks before she found out that Omar was killed in Iraq after joining ISIS.

A boy works in a blacksmith's workshop in Bab al-Tabbaneh. A security official estimates that 48 young men have joined ISIS, and that the latest wave of recruits left Lebanon on January 18. Only five of the 48 have so far been accounted for.

Ghufran, the mother of Zakaria Al Adl, a member of ISIS killed in Iraq.

Tripoli's poorest neighbourhoods have been major supporters of Sunni militants responsible for attacks against the army and involved in extremist activities in Tripoli and beyond.

Thousands have been detained on suspicion of terrorism links, many without trial.

Tripoli's Baddawi neighbourhood. It is believed that financial hardship is the main reason Tripoli's young men are joining ISIS ranks. The group is luring its recruits with the promise of salaries up to $5,000 a month, an official said.

Iraq's National Security Adviser Qassem Al Araji has said that Baghdad has started talks with Lebanese authorities about the ISIS threat.

Captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in 2017, she was eventually found in the sprawling Roj camp where she had a second child.

In June 2021 she was taken back to the Netherlands by Dutch officials through Iraq, and arrested on arrival at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.

The return of extremists to stand trial in the Netherlands is a politically sensitive subject and the Dutch NCTV anti-terror agency has warned that returning women may give an "impulse to connecting and supporting" extremist activities.

In February the government took five women from Al Roj camp to put them on trial in the Netherlands.

The move came after a Rotterdam court last year warned it may have to drop charges against the women if they were not brought back within a matter of months.

Aboit 300 Dutch extremists travelled to join fighters of the now defunct "caliphate" during the height of the Syrian civil war, Dutch government figures show.

About 120 remained, many in camps and detention centres in northern Syria, Iraq and Turkey.