UK’s refusal to repatriate citizens from Syria ‘morally reprehensible’

A cross-party parliamentary group’s report reveals that the UK’s stalled efforts to repatriate its citizens from detention in Syria are “deeply harmful to both national and global security.”

Six months ago, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Trafficked Britons in Syria launched an inquiry concerning the trafficking of British nationals by Daesh in camps across the northeastern Syria.

The camps are run by the YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK terror group.

According to the APPG report, around 20 British families remain detained in the northeastern Syria, and at least 63 percent of British women currently detained are said to be victims of trafficking to or within Syria - 44 percent were coerced by a male partner or relative.

Of British detainees not born in Syria, nearly half were children at the time of travel and likely to be trafficking victims.

To date, the UK government has refused to repatriate its nationals, a position that is contrary to that taken by close allies like the US. Ministers have repeatedly stated the UK cannot repatriate its nationals from the northeastern Syria because of safety concerns.

However, according to the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry, from September 2020 – June 2021, at least 322 children and 56 women were repatriated to thirteen different home countries.

The APPG report said the UK government has now abandoned its nationals in indefinite and unlawful detention in the northeastern Syria, calling the conditions of the detention camps “dire” with UK courts “accepting that they constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.”

Many of the British detainees have been held for over three years without charges, let alone a trial.

Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, APPG Co-chair, called Whitehall’s approach to British nationals detained in Syria as “morally reprehensible, legally dubious and utterly negligent from a security perspective.”

“Any ministers still clinging to the current failed policy would do well to read this report, which sets out the potentially catastrophic consequences of continued inaction,” Mitchell said.

According to the report, the APPG offered strong evidence that the government neglected to take adequate action to prevent trafficking and identify at-risk individuals who were most vulnerable, and failed to notify parents of children being groomed, among other incidents.

“These were not isolated incidents; rather this was a systemic failure to combat ISIS trafficking operations,” the report stated, calling the UK police’s counter-terrorism and anti-trafficking approach “siloed”.

The high profile case of Shamima Begum, who was recruited, transported, and exploited as a Daesh child bride after leaving the UK for Syria, represents the approach the UK government has chosen to take rather than honouring its international obligations.

Instead of being treated as a trafficking victim, Begum has been stripped of her citizenship and was denied the right to return home, in violation of the “non-punishment principle”.

Children cannot legally give consent to be trafficked, but governments justifying decisions to not repatriate their citizens often overlook it and treat them as adults who voluntarily joined terrorist outfits like Daesh.

Baroness Warsi, an APPG Vice Chair, called out the government for using its powers to “deprive citizenship almost exclusively against Muslims,” and that it is “now seeking to extend these draconian powers, signalling to Britons from minority communities that their rights can easily be taken away.”

In 2021, at least 163 people died in the notorious al Hol Camp, 62 of whom were children. Reports suggest that two children die in al Hol and Roj camps each week from preventable illnesses.

In conclusion, the APPG recommends that UK officials must take urgent steps to repatriate all British men, women, and children detained in the northeastern Syria in order to reduce risks to national security, prevent re-trafficking, and ensure justice and accountability for crimes committed by Daesh.

“The state failed to protect these British women and children and is failing them still. We can and must do better, with an evidence-based approach that recognises them as victims of a criminal terrorist gang,” said Mitchell, the APPG Co-chair.