Germany wants to retrieve IS children

berlin - The German government is trying to repatriate children of fighters and supporters of Islamic State. A number of German babies, toddlers and preschoolers, accompanied by their mother, are locked up in prisons and interrogation centers in Iraq after the collapse of the caliphate.

In the northern Iraqi city of Erbil alone, there are at least four very young people. One of the arrested mothers is also heavily pregnant. More than sixty women of different nationalities reside in a large cell with a host of children awaiting a possible trial.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the TV channels WDR and NDR, diplomats from Foreign Affairs have turned to the Iraqi government to release these young sons and daughters of German jihadists and to return them. That decision was taken on humanitarian grounds and because the government feels obliged to protect its own citizens. Iraq has not yet responded.

Germany assumes that around 940 people have gone to Syria or Iraq to join the terrorist organization. Two thirds of them have German nationality and their offspring therefore.