More than 80 children have arrived in Tajikistan from Iraq where their parents were sentenced for joining the Islamic State group and other militant outfits, Tajikistan's foreign ministry said online Wednesday.
Eighty-four children, all Tajik
citizens, had been "forced to join the ranks" of the militant groups
after their parents were recruited, according to the statement on the
ministry's website.
They returned on a special flight from Baghdad to Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe
on April 30, it added.
In February Tajikistan's foreign ministry said it was seeking the repatriation
of 75 children marooned in Iraq where 43 Tajik women are serving jail sentences
for extremism-related crimes.
Repatriating the jailed women would be far more difficult, Tajik foreign
minister Sirodjidin Mukhriddin admitted at the time.
The Islamic State (IS) group seized large swathes of Iraq in a lightning 2014
offensive, before the Iraqi government dislodged the jihadists from urban centres
and eventually declared victory in December 2017.
The fall of the Islamic State's caliphate in Iraq and Syria has left many
countries grappling with what to do with the jihadists and their relatives who
want to return.
Tajik authorities have said over 1,000 citizens left the country to fight on
the side of militant groups in Iraq and Syria after 2011, some after stints
working abroad in Russia.
The most famous IS recruit from Tajikistan was Gulmurod Halimov, who headed the
interior ministry's special forces unit before sensationally announcing his
defection to IS in a video attributed to the group in 2015.
Source: DTN
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