Inside the ‘Guantanamo for children’ in Syria
Hundreds of girls and boys whose mothers are linked to Islamic State are stuck in prisons funded by Britain
The walls of the daycare centre in this north-east Syrian prison are topped with barbed wire but adorned with paintings of Spongebob Squarepants and Mickey Mouse.
Inside, children who are imprisoned with their Islamic State-linked mothers have a respite from the cells they spend their lives in. They can play with building blocks; some make necklaces, others fashion guns. It is not clear how long they will remain here.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal that the prisons, which hold hundreds of IS members’ children, some as young as two, are being funded by Britain.
The UK has provided $20million (£15million) to improve the conditions in filthy, overcrowded jails in northeast Syria run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdishled militia that provided the ground forces to defeat IS on behalf of a global coalition. The SDF was left holding about 70,000 prisoners at the end of fighting in 2019. The vast majority are children, held in two large detention centres alongside their mothers.
But at least 700 children – and likely hundreds more – are detained indefinitely and without charge in prisons where conditions amount to “torture”, according to a UN special rapporteur. None has been prosecuted or found guilty of any crime.
Britain has said it will repatriate unaccompanied minors whose parents are UK citizens, but an estimated 60 remain in Syria. “The fact that the UK Government is using taxpayer money to pay for kids to grow up behind barbed wire in overcrowded prisons is horrifying,” said Maya Foa, the co-executive director of Reprieve, a legal NGO advocating for women and children detained in Syria. “The UK Government is effectively creating a Guantánamo for children in Syria.”
Nearly three years since the territorial defeat of IS, there has not been a full accounting of the number of children linked to the group who are imprisoned in north-east Syria. Some are described as having been child soldiers – so-called cubs of the caliphate – while others are merely considered to be of fighting age and therefore dangerous. Others are imprisoned alongside their mothers.
During a visit last month, the SDF denied a request to report inside prisons holding children, with officials citing security risks and the fear of inspiring IS sleeper cells to attempt prison breaks. Instead, The Telegraph was shown a daycare centre for children living in prison with their mothers.
The newly opened Helat Centre has no deradicalisation curriculum but teaches children English, Arabic and mathematics. In the afternoon, the children returned to the prison with their mothers, who had been sent from al-hol and Roj for alleged infractions including attempting to escape and radicalising their children. Eight “orphans” were also living in the prison. It was not clear why they remained in the prison.
Conditions in the prisons are “abhorrent”, according to a May report by a UN special rapporteur, which said they “met the threshold for torture, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law”. The report cited boys having “inadequate shelter, no bedding provision, unmanaged overcrowding, no access to sunlight, insufficient latrine access and virtually no shower access”. Many were exposed to tuberculosis, coronavirus and other communicable diseases, wrote Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. “No children should have to endure” such conditions, she wrote.
When The New York Times gained access to a jail holding IS prisoners in 2019, they found 86 children in one cell and 67 in another, thought to be between nine and 14.
In August, Lt Gen Paul Calvert, the coalition commander, announced the UK had pledged $20 million to upgrade the main facility holding IS fighters near Hassakeh. The SDF said UK funds had also been used to upgrade the women’s prison in Hassakeh and the Helat Centre. The coalition referred questions about the detention of children to the SDF. The SDF said it needs more help to improve conditions in prisons and for foreign governments to repatriate their citizens.
“We fought Isis with the world but now we have been left to deal with the fallout alone,” Redur Khalil, a senior SDF commander, said. “The international community needs to find a permanent solution to this problem.”
Mr Khalil said 700 children linked to IS were held in military detention centres and that most of them had been fighters. Most were Syrian and Iraqi, with “80 to 90” children of other nationalities. “Most of them were cubs of the caliphate and it was not possible to put them in al-hol,” he said. “They were a risk, there was no alternative.”
Mr Khalil said the United Nations was “supervising their situation”, though its children agency says it has no direct access to children detained in north-east Syria. These figures were disputed by Unicef, which said it was aware of at least 850 children imprisoned by the SDF. Experts say the longer children are left in prison, the harder it will be to rehabilitate them.
“There is endless conflict between us and the mothers,” Perwin Ali, manager of the Helat Centre, said. “They keep them up at night teaching their kids radical ideas. This is why we are planning to have bedrooms to keep them here because we’re not getting anywhere [with deradicalisation].”
International law states that children should be forcibly separated from their parents only as a last resort. But with authorities in Syria lacking a legal system to judge foreign nationals, Ms Ali said they needed more help.
Authorities have opened another deradicalisation centre that can care for about 150 teenage boys. But there is no plan for their release, with boys returned to prison when they turn 18.
While they plan to open a third facility to care for 250 boys, many are entering the prison system. At al-hol there are an estimated 27,000 children. When boys there reach puberty, authorities forcibly separate them from their mothers and take them to prisons. “They are a threat to camp residents and NGO workers – this is the only reason to remove these kids,” said Mr Khalil. Other officials said boys were removed from the camp to prevent pregnancies in the camp.
“Women are getting married to young boys to create the next generation of the caliphate,” said Vian Adar, a commander involved in guarding prisoners. “We don’t know how else to deal with it other than by removing them.”
‘The mothers keep them up at night teaching their kids radical ideas’