The Dutch government said on Tuesday that it would bring back 28 children and 12 women from Kurdish-run detention facilities in northern Syria. According to sources, this would make it the Netherlands’ largest operation of its kind to date. This comes in response to a Dutch court decision from May of this year ordering the women’s return.
Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra and Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius announced the transfer of 12 Dutch women suspected of terrorist offences and their 28 children to the Netherlands in a letter to the nation’s parliament. They also stated that the women would be detained upon arrival and would be put on trial.
According to reports, the Netherlands has long refused to send back women from Syrian refugee camps, claiming that they chose to travel to the civil war-torn nation. To ensure that their activities do not go ‘unpunished,’ a Rotterdam court ordered the officials to repatriate these women and their children within the following four months.
According to Dutch government records, some 300 citizens have gone to Syria and this is not the first such operation conducted by the government as they had repatriated five women and eleven children from a Kurdish refugee camp earlier this year.
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