“Mass Breakout at Syrian IS Prison: Dozens Escape as Shamima Begum Remains at Risk”

Описание: Dozens of suspected Islamic State (IS) wives pulled down fences and escaped from a prison camp in Syria 60 miles from where British-born Shamima Begum is being held

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Islamic State wives tear down prison fence in mass escape
British-born Shamima Begum could be freed as chaos erupts at Syrian camps

Footage from inside the Al-Hol prison camp showed dozens of women rioting, while smoke rises from burning tents and other buildings.

“Go, go, go,” women can be heard shouting in one video of the mass breakout verified by The Telegraph. “There are no guards,” one detainee says.

Syrian forces are closing in on the Kurdish-held territory in the north-east of the country where thousands of IS fighters and their relatives are being held, sparking mass evacuations.

On Wednesday, the US military said its forces would transfer thousands of IS prisoners to Iraq, with the first 150 fighters already moved to “secure” facilities across the border.
The intervention indicates Washington’s lack of confidence in the way government forces have taken over prisons.

Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, said the transfer of IS detainees is “critical to preventing a breakout that would pose a direct threat to the United States and regional security”.

Jihan Hanan, camp director at Al-Hol, told The Telegraph that before the army arrived, the detainees began attacking administrative offices and NGO facilities. “There was shooting, looting and burning,” she said.

She said that many people escaped, exploiting the chaos and the clashes close to the camp. She could not confirm a number, but said most were Syrian IS-linked men, along with some foreign detainees.
Begum, 26, who was stripped of her British citizenship after leaving London more than a decade ago to join IS, is being held further north in the Al-Roj detention camp which is still under control of Kurdish forces.

But the Syrian army is closing in on the camp, with scenes at Al-Hol raising concerns for the security of the facility that holds Begum and thousands of families of the terror group.

Syria’s government has led a lightning offensive in the region, capturing lands – once the heartland of IS – that have been held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) for more than a decade.

Up to 9,000 IS members, including commanders, and about 40,000 relatives of jihadists, including dozens of Britons, are housed in an unknown number of makeshift prisons and camps in the region.
The issue of foreign nationals in these camps has been ignored for too long, according to Harmonie Toros, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Reading.

“This is a legal and a security challenge for the UK government and other European nations, and the result of successive governments trying to ignore the question of the repatriation of British families from north-east Syria for nearly seven years,” she said.

“While much of the focus has been on the single case of Shamima Begum and her legal battle around citizenship, this is a broader question that involves at least 60 British or former British citizens, many of them children.”The Al-Hol camp holds more than 23,000 IS-affiliated detainees, including the most radical foreign women associated with the group.

Footage showed a convoy of Syrian army vehicles arriving on Tuesday, where hundreds of people were streaming out of the camp to cheer their arrival.

Kurdish sources and monitoring groups reported that government forces were actively allowing IS members to leave the camp, posting videos showing what appeared to be hundreds of prisoners flooding out of prison gates. The army has denied this.
A woman leaving Al-Hol can be heard chanting in a video: “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, we are proud of this.”

On Wednesday, the Syrian government declared the land around Al-Hol camp as a “restricted security area” as the search for IS escapees continued.
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