Orphan of ISIS caliphate trapped in Libyan prison
Tunisian toddler among hundreds in diplomatic limbo
TUNIS, Tunisia — He is an orphan of the Islamic State group’s self-proclaimed caliphate, a Tunisian toddler who is now caught in diplomatic limbo and has been stuck in a Libyan prison for a year.
Tamim Jaboudi’s grandfather has managed to visit the child twice in the prison in Tripoli, delivering a winter jacket and as much familial warmth as he can manage in the brief meetings. But Tamim barely knows him and by now can hardly remember his parents — a Tunisian couple who left their homeland to join ISIS and were killed last year in a U.S. airstrike, according to the grandfather, Faouzi Trabelsi.
Security concerns
Living among a group of around two dozen Tunisian women and their young children imprisoned in Tripoli’s Mitiga prison, Tamim is being raised by a woman who herself willingly joined ISIS, according to his grandfather.
“What is this young child’s sin that he is in jail with criminals?” asked Trabelsi, who has traveled twice to Libya to see the boy and twice returned home emptyhanded. “If he grows up there, what kind of attitude will he have toward his homeland?”
European governments and experts have documented at least 600 foreign children of fighters who live in or have returned from ISIS territory in Syria, Iraq or Libya. But the numbers are likely far higher.
In Libya, the fate of 44 Tunisian children is particularly uncertain. The North African nation descended into chaos after the 2011 civil war and has been split into competing governments with numerous militias, tribes and political factions.
Both Tunisia and Libya say they want the return of the women and children, but for months any effort to hand them over has fallen apart with little explanation. That has raised complaints in Tunisia that the government does not want them back for security concerns. But the militia running Mitiga prison, even as it says it want to hand over the families, has tightly controlled access to them, saying the Tunisians need permissions from the office of Tripoli’s top prosecutor.
On Wednesday, a Tunisia delegation was in Tripoli and was supposed to come to the prison, but the visit was canceled at the last minute, and the delegation returned home emptyhanded.
Tunisia is willing to take them, said Chafik Hajji, a Tunisian diplomat who handles the cases of Tunisians who have joined the extremists. “There is no wrong in being born in a conflict zone,” he said. “Once their Tunisian citizenship is confirmed, they will have an individual treatment.”
Tamim’s grandfather Trabelsi spoke with The Associated Press in his spotlessly clean living room in Tunis.
He said his daughter, Samah, married a young man from the neighborhood, and then the newlyweds left for Turkey, a common jumping off point for Europeans and North Africans joining extremist groups. Tamim was born there in April 2014. The couple returned to Tunisia briefly, then went to neighboring Libya, where they remained for two years, he said.
ISIS paid particular attention to recruiting families, boasting it would build a society to endure for generations.
“In the long term, there is the new generation of ISIS,” said Mohammed Iqbel, whose Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad advocates for the families of those who have left. “And if we don’t save them, they will be a new generation of terrorism.”
‘He is in a prison’
Quilliam researcher Nikita Malik said 80 British children were inside Islamic State territory. France estimated 450 children are within ISIS territory, including around 60 who were born there; Dutch and Belgian intelligence each offered an estimate of 80 of their own children. In the Netherlands, anyone over 9 is labeled a “jihadi traveler” and considered a potential security threat — 9 is the age at which Islamic State extremists formally begin teaching boys to kill.
The couple was among at least 40 dead in a U.S. airstrike on an ISIS training camp in the city of Sabratha in February 2016.
The Pentagon at the time said the target was Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian who suspected of involvement in the 2015 attack on Tunis’ Bardo Museum in which 22 people died.
Tamim survived and was taken with the group of Tunisian women and children, including Chouchane’s wife, to the air base prison. Word filtered back to his grandfather, who began pressing for the child’s return.
Despite daily commercial roundtrip flights from Tunis, the boy has not been allowed to return to his family.
“He is clean, he is in good shape. They told me they bring him out to play and see other children,” he said. “But he should be allowed back. He is in a prison.”