Published: Just now
Twelve women and their 28 children are to be brought back to the Netherlands from prison camps in northern Syria, the Dutch government announced. The group is the largest to date to be brought home by the Netherlands.
The women are suspected of terrorist crimes and of having joined the terrorist movement Islamic State.
“The women will be arrested upon arrival in the Netherlands and brought to trial,” said Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra and Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius in a letter to parliament.
The children will be taken into the care of the authorities.
It is not clear from which camp the women and children come, but only that they are picked up through a “special operation”.
Around 300 Dutch nationals traveled to Syria at the height of the civil war to join the terrorist movement, according to the government. Around 120 remain, most in Kurdish-controlled camps and prisons in northern Syria, or in Iraq and Turkey.