Washington.- The US government repatriated 28 Americans who allegedly belonged to the terrorist group Islamic State (IS), including 16 minors, from northern Syria, revealed this Monday the envoy of the State Department for the coalition against jihadism, John Godfrey.
In a telephone press conference, Godfrey explained that to date the US has assumed custody of 28 of its citizens, of which 16 are minors and 12 are adults.
Of those 12 adults, 10 are being criminally prosecuted before the US Justice.
As he has done previously, Godfrey again asked the European powers to take over the European jihadists who are in prisons in northern Syria under the custody of the Syrian Democratic Forces (FSD), an armed alliance led by militias. Kurdish Syrians.
Most of those detained are Syrians and Iraqis, and in fact the US authorities are working with the Baghdad government to transfer 30,000 of its citizens to Iraq.
Likewise, Godfrey indicated that currently about 2,000 individuals who are neither Syrian nor Iraqi remain in northern Syria, in addition to 10,000 people who are their relatives.
Under the government of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) and now with Joe Biden in the White House, the US has defended that jihadists should be repatriated to their countries of origin.
However, some European and Arab states prefer that they be tried where they committed their crimes.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, together with his Belgian counterpart, Sophie Wilmès, will chair a meeting with the foreign and defense ministers of 32 of the 83 members of the coalition against jihadism led by Washington.
The agenda, Godfrey detailed, will include the issue of foreign fighters, stabilization goals in Syria and Iraq for this year and how to finance them, and the growing presence of radicals in Africa.
Just this Monday, the Amaq agency, the IS propaganda organ, said that its fighters had taken control of the Mozambican city of Palma, in the north of the country.
Palma, located near the Afungi peninsula, which includes several gas projects, had been besieged for several days by Al Shabab, a group recently designated by the US as an “international terrorist organization”, affiliated with ISIS and responsible for thousands of deaths and of the displacement of nearly 700,000 people in northern Mozambique since 2017.
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