German Foreign Ministry efforts have succeeded in allowing a 14-month-old child to return to Germany from Iraq, accompanied by his grandfather.
The toddler is the son of German mother Zaibal. H, 30, and her second husband Denes. B who worked as a paramedic for ISIS.
He was born in Tal Afar and has lived with his parents in an Iraqi prison since the liberation of Mosul from ISIS. The mother joined the group twice in Syria and Iraq and was detained along with dozens of other women in a basement in Mosul. As for the father, he surrendered to the Peshmerga Forces during the Mosul siege.
The couple, who had joined ISIS in 2015, will soon appear before an Iraqi court on charges of membership with a terrorist group.
German security sources revealed that German investigators found in the mother’s mobile a video of her first husband who was killed in battles.
The government justified its intervention to secure the release of the child as part of its duty to defend German citizens. The German Foreign Ministry believes that the children should not be held responsible for their parents’ actions.
The child’s grandfather said the parents lived for years with ISIS as if they were in a prison.
He added that he paid the fees for the German Embassy in addition to a USD400 fine because according to Iraqi law, the child had entered the country illegally although he was born in Tal Afar.
The German government is preparing for the arrival of over 100 infants and children of people who left the country to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV agency, told Reuters earlier in the week that minors returning from war zones in the two countries could grow into a new generation of recruits in Germany for ISIS.
“We see that children who grew up with ISIS were brainwashed in the schools and the kindergartens" of the terrorist group, he said. “They were confronted early with the ISIS ideology ... learned to fight, and were in some cases forced to participate in the abuse of prisoners, or even the killing of prisoners.”
He said security officials believed such children could later carry out violent attacks in Germany.
Nearly 1,000 people are believed to have left Germany to join up with the militants.
