Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Biodun Iginla, BBC News
Showing posts with label Islamic State (IS) jihadists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islamic State (IS) jihadists. Show all posts

Friday, February 1, 2019

After joining Islamic State, German woman, aged 15, asks to go home


Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces
Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces AFP
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Beirut
Four years after leaving Germany to live under the Islamic State group, 19-year-old Leonora has fled the jihadists' last bastion in eastern Syria and says it's time to go home.
"I was a little bit naive," she says in English, wearing a long billowing black robe, and a beige headscarf with white spots.
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US-backed forces are fighting the last IS jihadists in a final shred of territory in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, causing thousands of people to flee.
Just beyond the frontline village of Baghouz, Leonora and her two small children are among the thousands of men, women and children to have scrambled out this week.
The young German woman says she first came to Syria aged 15, just two months after converting to Islam.
"After three days, I married my German husband," she tells us at France24, at a screening centre for the displaced run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
Leonora says she became the third wife of German jihadist Martin Lemke, after he travelled to Syria with his first two wives.
IS had the year before swept across large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, declaring a "caliphate" in areas it controlled.
Leonora first lived in the extremist group's de-facto Syrian capital of Raqa, but says she was just a housewife.
"I was just at home, in (the) house cooking, cleaning -- stuff like this," says the pale faced German, clutching the youngest of her two children, an infant aged just two weeks.
- 'Change house every week' -
Syria's Kurdish authorities hold hundreds of foreign alleged IS fighters in detention, as well as thousands of their wives and children in camps for the displaced.
The Kurds have repeatedly urged Western governments to take back their nationals, but these powers have been reluctant.
At first life in Raqa was easy, Leonora says, but that changed when the SDF started advancing against the jihadists, with support from US-led coalition air strikes.
The Kurdish-led SDF overran Raqa in 2017, after years of what residents described as IS's brutal rule, which included public beheading and crucifixions.
"Then they lose Raqa, and we started to change our house every week because they lost every week a city," she says.
When they came under attack by the Kurdish-led SDF, Leonora says the IS fighters left their families to fend for themselves.
"They left the women alone, no food, they don't care about you," she says. The enemy was advancing "and you were sitting alone in an empty city with your kids".
They ended up in a tiny patch on the eastern banks of the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor province.
The SDF have cornered IS into a patch of less than four square kilometres (around 1.5 square miles) in recent days.
- 'Big, big mistake' -
Eventually, she says, she picked up her children, and fled with her husband, and his second wife into SDF-held territory.
US-backed forces detained Lemke on Thursday.
Leonora claims Lemke worked mostly as a technician for IS.
"He makes technical stuff, computer stuff, repairs computer, mobiles," she says.
But investigations published in German newspapers portray Lemke, who is now believed to be 28, as an influential figure among foreign jihadists in Syria.
More than 36,000 people have fled the SDF assault on the so-called "Hajin pocket" since early December, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor that relies on a network of sources inside the country.
Among them, 3,200 have been detained as alleged jihadists.
On arid farmland near Baghouz, a group of men sit on the ground as SDF and coalition personnel stroll nearby.
Not far off, a group of women and their children -- most from neighbouring Iraq -- wait to be driven north to a Kurdish-held camp for the displaced.
After four years under a now near-extinct IS caliphate, Leonora says she wants to go home.
"I want to go back to Germany to my family, because I want my old life back," she says.
"Now I know that it was a big, big mistake."

Friday, January 22, 2016

Migrant crisis: EU at grave risk, warns France PM Valls

  • 22 January 2016




Media captionLyse Doucet spoke to the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has warned that Europe's migration crisis is putting the EU at grave risk.
Mr Valls told the BBC Europe could not take all the refugees fleeing what he called terrible wars in Iraq or Syria.
"Otherwise," he said, "our societies will be totally destabilised."
More than a million migrants, mostly refugees, arrived in Europe last year, many making perilous journeys. On Friday, at least 21 people were killed as their boats sank off Greek islands.
Mr Valls also said that France could extend its current state of emergency for "as long as is necessary" because of the threat from Islamic State (IS) jihadists, whom he called "Daesh".
Media captionFrench Prime Minister Manuel Valls: State of emergency 'as long as necessary'
"We will see if we extend it," he said. "We cannot live forever in a state of emergency."
The measures were introduced after the IS-led Paris attacks on 13 November and then extended for three months.
Mr Valls said the war against IS could last for a generation. "As long as the threat is there we must use all means at our disposal."
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Cologne incidents

Mr Valls was speaking to Lyse Doucet, the BBC's chief international correspondent, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Europe, he said, needed to take urgent action to control its external borders.
"If Europe is not capable of protecting its own borders, it's the very idea of Europe that will be questioned."
A migrant in the Image copyright Reuters
Image caption The migration crisis threatened major shifts in population, Mr Valls warned
Asked about border controls inside Europe which many fear put the passport-free Schengen zone at great risk, Mr Valls said the concept of Europe itself was now in very grave danger.
He did not directly criticise Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel for her welcoming message last year to refugees.
Mr Valls said she "had courage", but it was clear he believed her message was wrong, our correspondent says.
"A message that says 'Come, you will be welcome' provokes major shifts" in population, says Mr Valls.

Where Europe is failing on migrants

Migrant on the border between Serbia and Macedonia, 18 JanImage copyright EPA

  • The 28 member states have not agreed on an EU-wide mechanism for relocating migrants, meant to ease the burden on Greece and Italy. Only small groups have been relocated so far - and several states in Central and Eastern Europe refuse to accept migrants
  • The Schengen agreement on freedom of movement is in jeopardy - Hungary fenced off its borders with Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia; some other Schengen countries have re-imposed border controls: Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, France and Belgium
  • The Dublin regulation is not working effectively - countries are no longer sending back migrants to their first point of entry to the EU
  • Thousands of migrants - many of them Syrian war refugees - still arrive daily from Turkey
  • Processing of asylum applications is slow and there is a big backlog - so reception centres are overcrowded
  • Germany - the main destination for migrants - is rethinking its open-door policy, partly because of outrage over assaults on women in Cologne at New Year

He added: "We know clearly that after the Cologne incidents that with the continuous flow, not only to Germany but the countries of Northern Europe, Austria, the Balkans are confronted with this influx, that's why we need to find practical solutions for our borders."
Mr Valls was referring to attacks in the German city on New Year's Eve - largely attributed to foreigners - that have sparked 800 complaints, 520 of them relating to sexual crimes.
Mrs Merkel will later meet Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Berlin, with both the countries' cabinet members in attendance.
EU countries hope Turkey will help to control the flow of migrants reaching the EU from Syria and other conflict zones.
On Friday, at least 21 people, including eight children, died when two boats sank off the Greek islands of Farmakonisi and Kalolimnos, the Greek coastguard said.
Some 48 survivors reached shore but dozens of other migrants were reported missing.
Map of arrivals
Survivors of Friday's boat sinking off Kalolimnos change clothes on Kalymnos, 22 JanImage copyright AP
Image caption Survivors of Friday's boat sinking off Kalolimnos change clothes on Kalymnos island

'Eradicate IS'

On the issue of the state of emergency, Mr Valls said France was "at war", which meant "using all means in our democracy under the rule of law to protect French people".
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The measure gives police more power to conduct raids and impose house arrests.
Media captionFrance has declared a state of emergency following the attacks on Paris
When asked how long he envisaged the state of emergency remaining, Mr Valls said: "The time necessary.
"As long as the threat is there, we must use all the means," he said, adding that it should stay in place "until we can get rid of Daesh", using an acronym for the IS group.
"In Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia we must eradicate, eliminate Daesh," he said. "It is a total and global war that we are facing with terrorism," he added. "The war we are conducting must also be total, global and ruthless."
Mr Valls said France "could see attacks again", adding that six plots had been foiled over the past few months.
Attackers linked to IS killed 130 people in co-ordinated assaults across Paris in November, leading to the first declaration of a state of emergency in France in 10 years.
The measures are set to expire on 26 February.
This week, a group of UN human rights experts said they were "excessive and disproportionate".