Camp is for most extreme female Isil supporters, aid workers say

AID workers say a new Syrian camp where Zahra Halane and her son are being detained is used to isolate the most hardened foreign female Isil supporters and their children.

Sources say Kurdish forces appear to be moving “more extreme profiles” into a high security extension to Roj camp, which houses 1,700 foreign women and children, including Shamima Begum who fled her home in east London to marry a fighter with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

“The authorities are being incredibly cagey about giving us any details about this,” an aid worker said after 54 women and children were transported to the new extension from Hassekeh women’s prison on Sunday.

Some of the new arrivals were suffering from chickenpox and malnutrition, the insider said.

Ms Halane and her son Ismail were among them, according to another aid worker, who said she had sustained injuries to her head and hand at some point. She is understood to have been imprisoned for a month after being caught escaping from Al Hol camp.

The aid workers spoke anonymously to avoid jeopardising access to the camp. Designed to hold 400 families, the new Roj extension was originally built to relieve overcrowding at Al Hol, which holds about 10,000 foreign women and children in an annex set apart from more than 55,000 Syrian and Iraqi citizens in the main camp.

Aid workers describe a “highly securitised” environment at the new Roj extension. “Local authorities maintain the security forces 24 hours there, we have limited access to them,” one aid worker said.

Women in Al Hol say the new extension is a black hole where “hardcore supporters” are held incommunicado.

Aid workers say it is difficult to deliver aid to the extension.

“Their isolation from the general population will put them at extreme risk of protection violations,” a third aid worker said.

‘Their isolation from the general population will put them at extreme risk of protection violations’