Members of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces stand guard over veiled women in al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, which houses relatives of Islamic State group members, 2019. Photo: AP
QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— Syria’s Kurds have released 30 Syrians suspected of affiliation to the Islamic State group after guarantees from tribal leaders, a spokesman said Tuesday, adding more should be freed soon.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold thousands of suspected IS fighters after years of leading the US-backed fight in the country against the jihadist group.
The suspects are mostly Syrian and Iraqi — Iraq was the other key crucible of the conflict with IS — but they also include hundreds of foreigners.
A spokesman for the Kurdish authorities in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in northeastern Syria said tribal leaders had requested that 300 Syrian detainees be freed, and that 30 were approved and released on January 5.
“Those being released have no blood on their hands and have not been proven guilty of any crime,” the Kurdish region’s foreign affairs spokesman Kamal Akef told AFP.
They might have joined the extremist group to earn a living or because they were forced to, he said.
They “are being released with guarantees from the tribal leaders,” the official added, without specifying what guarantees are involved.
“In the coming days, some more will be released in waves” to return to the provinces of Deir Ezzor and Raqa in the east and north of Syria, he said.
Earlier that month, nearly 300 Syrian men were freed after tribal chiefs lobbied for their release including in Raqa, the Kurdish authorities said.
At the time, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said it was not the first release of IS-linked prisoners, but the number was particularly large.
The Kurds have also said they were releasing hundreds of suspected IS-linked women and children from overcrowded camps for the displaced.
In December 2019 around 200 Syrian displaced people, mostly women and children, were heading home from the desert camp in the northeast.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of foreigners suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children, during the battle against IS in Syria and are being held in by Kurdish forces in Syrian Kurdistan.
The Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called on Western nations to repatriate their nationals, but they have been largely reluctant, except in a handful of cases.
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