How Shamima Begum camps are breeding next twisted generation of ISIS as kids make ‘cutthroat’ gesture & hurl firebombs
A CHILD no older than eight draws his hand across his neck in a chilling throat-slitting gesture – the message is clear, “You are not welcome here”.
Other kids hurl stones, shout and scream – while one exasperated camp official shows us CCTV of two youngsters hurling a firebomb.
Welcome to camps al-Hol and al-Roj in northern Syria – the fates of which remain uncertain after the fall of tyrant Bashar al-Assad.
It is warned these stark detention centres are now the breeding ground for the next generation of the bloodthirsty cult.
And much of this new wave of radicalisation is feared to be coming from the mothers inside the camps.
Senior camp official Rashid Omer said: “The reality is – they are not changing. This is not a normal camp – this a bomb.”
He went on: “They are saying it was ISIS who ‘liberated’ Damascus – and soon they will be coming here.”
“And then they want to spread to Europe, to Africa, and then to everywhere.”
The two sprawling sites hold a total of nearly 60,000 including ISIS fighters, families and children.
At least 6,000 Westerners are still held among them – including infamous jihadi bride Shamima Begum, the 25-year-old from London.
Extremism is warned to be fomenting again – including the return of disturbing practices such as child marriages.
There is a generation being raised who have known nothing beyond the twisted rule and warped education of ISIS.
Our exclusive video shows the camps beneath the clear and cold Syrian skies in late December.
Walking through you see ramshackle tents, market stalls selling fruit and veg, and most women and girls wearing full-body veils.
Villages of makeshift tents are divided up with metal fences, porta-cabin-style guard posts, and bare concrete facilities.
Documentarian and ex-soldier Alan Duncan shared footage inside these two camps with The Sun as he visited over Christmas.
He has visited the vast network of camps and prisons holding ISIS fighters in Syria more than 40 times since 2019.
Many just want to use their muscle, to fight, to kill – but [the Westerners] are quiet. They plan.
Rashid Omer
After fighting against the terror group alongside the Kurds, he turned to using his camera to investigate the cult’s crimes.
And he warned he has never seen the camps in such a state as radicalisation grows.
CCTV footage shared with Duncan shows two kids throwing a firebomb against one of the camp fences on Christmas Eve.
And as he walked along the camp perimeter he was pelted with stones, and one young child made the “cutthroat” gesture towards him.
Administrators have said radicalisation is running rife – with much of it now being driven by ISIS brides and mothers held in the camp.
It is feared they are raising a new wave of “caliphate cubs”.
Armed guards are at the two sites- with US-backed Kurds who were key in defeating the terrorists now acting as their defacto jailers.
But with increasing pressures after the fall of Assad and attacks from Turkey, they now nearly running on a skeleton crew.
Guards for example can now no longer patrol inside al-Hol as the Kurds simply do not have enough bodies.
Many of those held here have been disowned by their home nations for their crimes – leaving them stuck in limbo.
The Kurds are trying their best to keep order in the camps.
But they face a losing battle as fears loom that jihadis hiding in the desert could launch a jailbreak.
They warn the most radical of the camp’s inhabitants are increasingly emboldened by the fall of Assad.
Many now believe it is only a matter of time before either a resurgent ISIS – or the rebels – could come to “liberate” them.
Al-Roj is home to women and children who were family members of ISIS fighters who slaughtered their way across the Middle East, while the much larger al-Hol also holds males.
Camp guards gave filmmaker Duncan a sanctioned tour of both sprawling facilities.
In an eye-opening interview – one camp administrator at al-Roj, Rashid Omer, who has worked at the facility for five years, sounded the alarm.
Speaking via a translator, Omer said: “The kids are becoming more radical – we used to send them to rehabilitation centres when they were 13.
They are organising – and they claim they are still in contact with ISIS
Rashid Omer
“But there were a lot of complaints as we would separate them from their mothers.
“We used to send them to schools and they changed their minds. But now we can’t do that, and they are getting more radical.”
He added radical cells in the camp have carefully coordinated meetings under the cover of darkness.
Omer said: “They tell us because of the loss of control of Syria in ‘two or three days’ they will be liberated.”
He went on: “They have more hope – they think the Turks or the militias will come to free them.”
Omer declined to be pictured or filmed due to fears for his safety but was happy to be named.
The camp admin warned many are now convinced they are on the cusp of liberation after the fall of Assad.
He said many ISIS families who claimed to have been rehabilitated are now falling back onto their roots as they now have “hope”.
Omer said many had made efforts to appear to be de-radicalised, but this was likely a ruse to try and get themselves freed.
He said: “They may have changed their clothes and said they changed their minds as they wanted to go back to their homes.
“But after the uprising they have now got more hope – and they are still radical.”
Omer added: “They are organising – and they claim they are still in contact with ISIS.”
And he said extremist practices such as child marriages are now returning after once being stamped out.
Omer told one story where an orphan boy born to a French ISIS member was due to be sent home.
But the woman who was looking after him refused to let him go.
COMMENT: Shamima said severed heads didn’t faze her - she deserves no home in UK
By Tom Tugendhat MP, former Minister of State for Security
IN 2015, Shamima Begum left her friends, her family and her future in East London and boarded a plane to Turkey.
Her final destination was Syria, and her intention to join ISIS, a jihadi death cult.
Over the next few years, ISIS raped and murdered their way across the Middle East.
As their barbaric wave of extremism and beheadings spread, Shamima chose to remain a part of it. She chose to stay.
Begum may have started a child. But she became a criminal. And she chose to remain with ISIS until they had been driven back, and lost all of their Middle Eastern territories in 2019.
When a reporter finally found her in a Syrian refugee camp, she told him that she ‘didn’t regret coming here’.
She described how the first severed head she had seen didn’t faze her at all, as it belonged to an ‘enemy of Islam’, before telling the reporter that she wanted to return to the UK.
Thankfully, that never happened. Then Home Secretary Sajid Javid made good on the decision she had made in 2015, and every year of the fighting since, by stripping her of her British citizenship and blocking her return.
He said at the time that he would not hesitate to remove someone’s nationality if it was the only option left to him to protect those living in the UK.
It was the right call then. It would be the right call now.
READ MORE HERE
Omer recalled she said: “We will keep him here. We spend our lives to make the Islamic State.”
He also warned Westerners – in particular, Brits and French fighters – are seen as the “planners” of the ISIS cells within the camps.
“They are more dangerous – they plan, they take action, they are more clever,” he told The Sun.
“Many others just want to use their muscle, to fight, to kill – but [the Westerners] are quiet. They plan.”
He added: “We notice everything in the camp and we see the locals – those from the Middle East – do what the Westerners are planning.”
Omer said teenage boys are also now being married off the older women in al-Hol.
Omer said: “In a lot of cases, they marry – and then they have kids. We can’t face this problem alone.
“We can’t rehabilitate these kids as they work against us.
“And if someone is radicalised, we also can’t send them to the prisons – as everyone in there is already radicalised.”
He said the world has a “duty” to help deal with the detrioating situation in the camps.
He warned Turkey, the new Syrian administration led by al-Qaeda splinter group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) seek to take control of the camps.
Omer fears this would mean the release of all detainees, even the most extreme & bloodthirsty ISIS fighters.
The most famous of these is jihadi bride Begum – who fled the UK to join ISIS when she was a teen.
Begum swore at Duncan and declined to be interviewed when he was led to her tent by one of the camp’s guards.
Most of these jihadis and their families are now stateless – having been rejected by their nations of birth.
The question of what to do with them looms large once again after a top aide of Donald Trump said they want to send them home.
Al-Hol and al-Roj are run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a Kurdish-led, US-backed militia which was instrumental in defeating ISIS.
They also run prisons for the most extreme ISIS fighters, with the US estimating some 2,000 can still be classed as “highly dangerous”.
But right now they are forced to act merely as jailers – with no clear roadmap of what to do with the thousands and thousands held in detention, or with simply nowhere else to go.
The camps have also been attacked by ISIS remnants who continue to gather strength in the desert and who have been embolden by the fall of Assad.
SDF intelligence suggests the cult is plotting a mass jailbreak – and could strike both the prisons and the camps.
EXCLUSIVE: ISIS plotting wave of terror from camps, warns general who defeated cult
By Henry Holloway, Deputy Foreign Editor
ISIS could unleash a new wave of terror by springing fighters from camps like the one holding Shamima Begum, a top general who helped defeat the death cult has revealed.
General Mazloum Abdi, who leads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – a Kurdish-led US-backed militia, sounded the alarm over the resurgent terror group.
Speaking to The Sun in an interview with documentarian and ex-soldier Alan Duncan, Abdi said there are currently 10,000 male fighters in prisons ready to bring devastation back to the Middle East.
General Abdi revealed SDF believe that ISIS forces – which were bravely driven back by his troops – are currently organising a prisonbreak of fighters still held in Syria.
He also warned the threat of ISIS continues in the West.
General Abdi said: “The threat of jihadist groups – not just ISIS – will exist until the fundamentals they were founded on are destroyed.
“We must continue our struggle.”
He also called on the West to do more to bring these fighters to justice – and to support trials and convictions for the atrocities they committed in the Middle East.
General Abdi told The Sun: “The threat of ISIS in detention centres and camps is increasing and there is an increase in the movement of ISIS in general.
“There is a need to intensify efforts to continue to fight against ISIS if we don’t want to see a resurgence.”
READ MORE HERE
Syria is currently being run by a provisional government formed by the HTS rebel group – which was originally a splinter group of al-Qadea and has been accused of having links to ISIS.
HTS – under the auspices of its leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – is attempting to present itself as a modernising force.
But it’s feared amid the power vacuum and efforts to pull Syria together they could fall back onto their jihadist roots.
Duncan told The Sun: “What we are seeing here is now the second generation of the ‘Cubs of the Caliphate’.
“The kids here have not been radicalised by the males, they’ve been radicalised by the mothers in the camps.
“When you see them [drawing their hand across their throats] – have no doubt they would do it to you.”
He went on: “I’ve been into the camps and prisons countless times over the years – and I can safely say I’ve never seen it as bad as it is at the minute.
“As far as many of these people are concerned they are about to be liberated.”
Documentarian Duncan formerly served with the Queen’s Own Highlanders and Royal Irish Regiment.
He then fought alongside the Kurdish Peshmergas as a sniper in the battle against ISIS.
And after the war was over, he decided to use his camera as his new weapon in exposing the depravity of the jihadi cult’s crimes.
His most famous story was the rescue of Naveen Rasho – a Yazidi woman who was held as a slave by ISIS in Syria.
One of Naveen’s captors – an ISIS bride known as Nadine K – has since been jailed in Germany for her role in the genocide.
His full documentary on Naveen’s ordeal can viewed on Vimeo.