Take back jihadists we captured, Trump tells European allies of US
Most of the Islamic State fighters hail from Britain, Germany and France
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has threatened to release hundreds of Islamic State fighters captured by the US in Syria if the UK, Germany and other European countries do not take back their nationals among them and put them on trial.
“The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS (Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, another name for the group) fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial,” Trump tweeted on Saturday. The alternative, he warned, is not good. “The US does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go.”
“We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!,” he added. “We do so much, and spend so much - time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing,” Trump said in one of his tweets.
Trump had announced in December that the IS had been decimated and that he was pulling out the 2,000 US troops deployed to combat the group in Syria. Differences persist among his officials on the extent of the damage inflicted on the IS. The so-called caliphate, that had once included vast swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, has shrunk to a tiny encampment in the village of Baghouz on the eastern banks of the Euphrates river, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Saturday.
Trump has said a complete victory is at hand. “It should be formally announced sometime probably next week that we will have 100% of the caliphate,” he recently told diplomats and officials of the 30 countries that form the Global Coalition to defeat ISIS.
Trump’s threat to release the captured IS fighters comes amid a debate in European countries on what to do with them. Several countries that have chosen to leave the jihadists in SDF detention now confront a diplomatic, legal, political and logistical puzzle. France announced it will take back its nationals. But the British have been less willing. The cabinet is split, for instance, on the question of Shamima Begum, a London teenager who fled to Syria in 2015. She is currently at a Syrian refugee camp and has delivered a baby, according to reports.
TERRORISTS HOLDING 1,000 PEOPLE HOSTAGE
The US-backed Syrian militia fighting the IS in its last toehold in Syria says there are over 1,000 civilians trapped in the tiny area and that the militant group is preventing them from leaving.
Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the SDF, said on Sunday that IS has closed all the roads in and out.
SDF officials said the extremists are hiding among civilians in a tented village and using a network of caves and tunnels.
US APPEAL FOR NATO PERSONNEL REJECTED
A US appeal for NATO allies to fill the void left by its imminent withdrawal from Syria was dismissed by Spain’s foreign minister, still bristling at Trump’s decision to bring his troops home.
US vice-president Mike Pence told reporters at the Munich Security Conference that the US is asking NATO members and other partners to provide “the resources and the support and the personnel” required to prevent a resurgence of IS once US operations conclude. “Requests between countries aren’t made in press releases or conference comments,” Spain’s Josep Borrell said in Munich on Saturday.