Wednesday March 29, 2023
The Juma sisters. (needtoknow.tv)
Oslo (HOL) - The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) announced the arrest of two sisters who returned to Norway from Syria early Wednesday with their children. The Norwegian authorities charged the sisters with participating in the terrorist organization ISIS and stated that child protection services were involved in the care of the children.
On Tuesday, Norway announced the repatriation of the two sisters, Ayan and Leila Juma, and their three children from a Syrian refugee camp, citing the deplorable conditions in the facility. The Norwegian-Somali sisters left Norway for Syria as teenagers in 2013 to join the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Now aged 29 and 25, the women have three daughters between them, fathered by Islamic State fighters, according to the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.
The children are reportedly aged six, seven, and eight.
Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said, "The living conditions in the camps are extremely bad and dangerous. These Norwegian children have been living for a long time in these camps where no children should have to live." Huitfeldt added that the sisters sought assistance in returning to Norway with their children, knowing they would face arrest upon arrival. Huitfeldt pointed out that the US, UN, and Kurdish authorities have supported repatriation in similar cases due to regional instability.
The Kurdish administration, which controls the Al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria, announced Tuesday that the sisters had been handed over to a Norwegian diplomat. They were placed on a flight scheduled to land at Oslo's Gardermoen airport at 12:40 am on Wednesday. The PST
arrested the two women upon arrival.
This case resembles others involving young Europeans who travelled to Syria, including Shamima Begum, a British citizen who was stripped of her nationality after joining ISIS as a teenager. Begum recently lost a legal battle to reverse the decision.
In 2020, Norway repatriated a woman with IS links from Syria after one of her children became seriously ill.
Ayan and Leila Juma arrived in Norway from Somalia as young children. They became radicalized as teenagers, a process that went largely unnoticed by their parents until they requested to wear niqabs. Despite their parents' refusal, they wore the garments and grew increasingly isolated at school. In 2013, they left for Syria, shocking their parents who had emigrated from Somalia 13 years prior in search of a better life.
Their father, Sadiq Juma, a former teenage soldier in Somalia, attempted to find and bring his daughters back from Syria. He managed to locate them and briefly met with Ayan, who had married a Norwegian Eritrean ISIS fighter. She refused to return home, and Sadiq was subsequently imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured before escaping.