Sweden won't help citizens held in Daesh camps return: FM

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said yesterday that the country would not offer aid to return Swedes that had joined Daesh and were currently held in camps in northeastern Syria.

“The government will not act so that the Swedish citizens and persons with connections to Sweden who are in camps or detention centres in north-eastern Syria are brought to Sweden,” Billstrom said in a statement to AFP.

“Sweden has no legal obligation to act for these individuals to be brought to Sweden. This applies to women, children and men,” he continued.

Western nations have been urged to repatriate their citizens from Syria. In a meeting in June last year, At a meeting of the international anti-Daesh coalition in the Saudi capital said it is “disheartening and absolutely unacceptable” that some wealthy countries have not yet returned their nationals who remain stranded in prisons and camps in north-east Syria.

“To those countries, you must step up, you must take your responsibility,” the kingdom’s Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal Bin Farhan, said.

Since the territorial and military defeat of the Daesh terror group in 2019, thousands of the group’s captured fighters have been detained in prisons, while tens of thousands of surviving and deceased fighters’ relatives have been kept in camps.

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