Campbell MacDiarmid

But the problem of what to do with these thousands of foreign men women & children held by Syrian Kurdish forces remains. @abdulkarimomar1 described these camps to me as a ticking time bomb: “ISIS prisoners and their families are a responsibility for the global community.”

Here's another tweet by @AliBaroodi describing his experience living under ISIS in Mosul and his fears that the west will ignore crimes committed by ISIS in favour of repatriating their citizenshttps://twitter.com/AliBaroodi/status/1097157086528581632 …

People who lived under ISIS now feel that too much attention is afforded to these westerners at the expense of the victims of ISIS.https://twitter.com/AliBaroodi/status/1096094771372871681 …

83% of non-ISIS supporters surveyed by @vera_mironov think that women will be just as dangerous in the future of ISIS as men. Cassandra agrees, saying the camp she is in is filled with dangerous jihadis: “Many don’t want to go home, so they're not afraid of committing acts here."

Which doesn't excuse joining a terrorist group. Those who lived under ISIS see women as almost as culpable as men. @vera_mironov did research in Mosul showing that 79% of non-ISIS supporters think the women were as radical as the men.

Looking at why women like Cassandra were attracted to ISIS often reveals a broken home life as the biggest motivator. “Young women were looking for forgiveness,” Dutch criminologist Marion van San says. “Initially they found that in Islam and later in a departure for Syria.”

Yes ISIS supporters are by their nature anathema to western values. But undermining our legal systems to deny them civic rights is counterproductive, says lawyer Nicolas Cohen. Leaving Cassandra in Syria effectively “overturns a very strong body of national and international law”

Bodart has been convicted in absentia of membership in a terrorist group. But her lawyer is fighting to bring her home so she can face trial as a citizen of her own country. “Otherwise citizenship doesn’t mean anything,” he told me.

Belgium is at the heart of the debate about what to do with foreign fighters & their families. At least 422 of its citizens went to Syria & Iraq to fight, the highest per capita rate in western Europe. More on that by @p_vanostaeyen & @GuyVanVlierden : https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ICCT-Van-Ostaeyen-Van-Vlierden-Belgian-Foreign-Fighters-June2018.pdf …

Many would be content to leave her where she is in Syria, arguing that she made her bed, let her lie in it. As the former head of Belgian intelligence Alain Winants told me, for participants in ISIS “the general view is that it would be preferable to let them be judged in Syria”

Cassandra converted to Islam as a teenager after facing some difficulties at home. At 18, she met a French jihadi on Facebook, 26 years her senior, they married and she followed him to Raqqa. No surprise, it was, she says now, a huge mistake.