First public hearing on five captured IS women
The first public and introductory hearing in the case about five female Syrian refugees who were collected from a refugee camp in Syria at the beginning of February with their eleven children will be held in the court in Rotterdam on Friday morning.
The women and children have been collected from the Kurdish refugee camp al-Roj in northern Syria. According to their lawyer, they stayed there under appalling conditions. He had been making requests to pick up the women for 3.5 years.
The Netherlands had to make an effort to get the women back, so that they can be prosecuted here for their possible involvement in the terrorist organization IS. If this were not done in time, their lawsuits would be dropped.
After arriving in the Netherlands, the women, aged between 26 and 53, were arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences. Their children have been handed over to the Child Protection Board.