"We are three French women with five children ...

We want to surrender
to Turkey ... But it is complicated." The French jihadist
N. communicates with a hidden telephone from the remote periphery of
the Syrian city of Raqqa. For days she has been held in a peasant's
house while planning the escape route to leave the country
definitively . See its location on the map and it is only 50 km from the
Turkish border. But the journey involves innumerable obstacles: Bashar
al-Assad's troops are moving west and the road is riddled with
checkpoints from the Kurdish militia of the YPG that, if arrested, will
return them to the detention camps.
The French N. is one of the fugitives of the Ain Issa camp for
relatives of combatants of the Islamic State terrorist group
(ISIS) who escaped the premises on October 13 . The Turkish
artillery, after the start of the offensive to establish its security zone,
reached the immediate vicinity of the camp and in the resulting chaos
750 detainees ended up fleeing the settlement.

Gallows or Iraqi jail? The uncertain fate of the 57 Spanish jihadists detained in

Syria
PILAR CEBRIÁN.ROJ CAMP (SYRIA)
They would form part of an agreement between the Kurdish-Syrian militia of the SDS and the Iraqi
Government to send a total of 450 prisoners of the Islamic State and 13 nationalities to Iraq
The prisoner of the Islamic State then asked for help by phone: "We do
not know what we are going to do, we do not know if they are going to
take us to another place, if we are going to stay here, we do not know
what will happen!" Syrian civilians wandering the camp offered them
protection and led them to a house in northern Raqqa. A family stay
in a small farm and farm village.
N., along with two other French jihadists, plan for 12 days the possibility
of approaching the Syrian city of Tel Abyad , taken by Turkey in the
course of the military operation, as this country could finally activate its
repatriation to France. "The question is how are we going to pass the
Kurdish checkpoints," he insists. Thus, he asks for help from a Syrian
militiaman of the SNA - the Syrian National Army - the 'proxy' force
that fights with the Turks in Tel Abyad. "We cannot reach Raqqa," they
answer.
"We just want to go back to France"
N. and his son, who was born in the Caliphate of the terrorist group two
years ago, have been held at the Ain Issa camp since
2018 . The inaction of the French government to manage the return
of about 130 jihadists of this nationality , the procrastination of
removing minors, the uncertainty of the new Turkish offensive and the
fear of being handed over to Iraq has led the prisoners of the Islamic
State to resort to evasion, secrecy and illegal routes as a last resort to
return to Europe. "We just want to go back to France," writes N.
Europe loses control of its jihadists, who escape the chaos of the Turkish
offensive
PILAR CEBRIÁN.SANLIURFA (TURKEY)
More than 1,100 Europeans, including jihadists and relatives, are located or guarded in prisons and
camps, but could disappear in the war chaos of the Turkish offensive

Over the days, women contact a trafficker to move to the Turkish

position in Tel Abyad. They do not know if they will be locked up in the
prisons of the border city or instead they will be able to pass to the
territory of southern Turkey. "He has asked us to send him a photo and
our name to give it to the Turkish army and our government," says N.
This is the worst moment of the 'exfiltration', in which they pass through
several hands, different rooms, negotiations and endless routes by
car Until this message finally arrives: "We are being held in a school in
the town of Suluk. It is an SNA base . " In a group of 17 other people
of different nationalities, the French are made available to the Turkish
authorities on October 31, 2019.
Dispute between Turkey and the EU
The French jihadists are part of the 287 foreigners captured in
Syria since the start of the Turkish operation Manantial de Paz . So
far, a US citizen has been returned and, as announced by Turkish
Interior Ministry spokesman Ismail Çatakli, 7 Germans, 2 Irish and 11
French will return to their country this week.
After the process of identification and criminal investigation, if there is no
evidence against them in Turkey, the Immigration Department (DGMM)
contacts the corresponding consular institution. In the case of N. the
communication activates the Cazeneuve Protocol, signed between
Turkey and France in 2014, whereby Ankara must alert Paris when a
French citizen is detained in the area of the Turkish-Syrian border.
The FTF dossier has been a matter of tension between Turkey and the
European Union, which has blamed Ankara for encouraging dispersion
for not reporting on deportation flights in time. But the country's
authorities disagree and believe that "we have been unjustly accused of
being the highway of these FTFs (foreign terrorist fighters)," says an
official with the Turkish Foreign Ministry. He adds that "we have asked
our partners to help us identify them when they come." "They have
enough intelligence and information to suspect that they are traveling to
a conflict then, why didn't they stop those exits in the first instance?" He
asks. "They probably preferred that these people fall dead in combat
in Syria."

Spanish jihadists, detained in Syria, fear a transfer of prisoners to Iraq

PILAR CEBRIÁN.ROJ CAMP (SYRIA)
Two months later, the two conversational Madrilenians Yolanda and Luna, who emigrated to the
Islamic State in the 2014 prolegomena, are still waiting in Roj's limbo
Despite this, the source insists that "we have excellent cooperation
with France, almost all FTFs have been deported (more than
200)" ; "and there is no complaint in the coordination with Spain", where
about 30 Spanish FTFs have been returned. One of the best known
is Asia Ahmed Mohamed , the 28-year-old Ceuta jihadist and wife of
Kokito. His transfer to Barcelona was requested by way of extradition
since he had been sentenced by a court in the Turkish city of Kilis to 4
years and 2 months in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization.
We are a Daesh hotel
Even more than 1,200 Daesh suspects, more than half foreigners of
43 nationalities, are serving sentences or are waiting to be expelled in
prisons in Turkey. And the matter has opened, in recent years, new lines
of dialogue with community members "so that France for example
assumes the cost of the ticket, the security process is carried out with
more agility and can send a (police) as escort "remember in Exteriors.

About 30 "foreign fighters"

related to ISIS have already
been returned to Spain
The relationship is not so fluid with other countries, such as the United
Kingdom and the Netherlands, that withdraw nationality to those who
moved to the Caliphate. Two Dutch jihadists have not received
assistance from consular personnel when they appear at the Embassy in
Ankara and it is now the competence of the Turkish authorities to open a
judicial case against them or to begin the process of repatriation to
Morocco, a country of which they also retain citizenship. "We are not a
hotel for Daesh members," said Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman
Soylu , "and we will continue to send them back. If they receive them or
not, that is not our problem," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
has concluded.
Precisely the reluctance of European governments to handle the more
than 1,200 detainees in northern Syria (figure of the Egmont Institute)
could reopen the flow of prisoners from the Islamic State to
Turkey. These days, the communication platforms of the detainees in the
camps propose collections to pay the traffickers, "those who have money
leave the area safely, and those who do not get trapped here," explains
one of them. But this illegal route is fraught with risks such as the
abduction, rape or death of hundreds of women and children; and it
contributes, in short, to the dispersion of the largest share of prisoners of
a terrorist organization.