Saturday January 25, 2025
Credit/ needtoknow.tv
OSLO, Norway (HOL) —Two Somali-born sisters have been sentenced to prison in Norway for their involvement with the Islamic State (ISIS) nearly a decade after secretly fleeing the country as teenagers to join the extremist group in Syria.
The Oslo District Court handed down the ruling on Friday, January 24, convicting the sisters, now aged 27 and 31, of being members of the terrorist organization. The older sister received a four-year prison sentence, while her younger sibling was sentenced to two years, with one year suspended. Both sentences align with recommendations from prosecutors.
The court determined that the sisters played roles within ISIS as wives and mothers, stating they fulfilled responsibilities "as much as women could and were expected to" while living under the group's brutal regime. Despite their claims of coercion, the court found sufficient evidence to convict them.
Norwegian authorities repatriated the women in March 2023, citing the need to safeguard their children's welfare. At the time, the sisters and their children were being held at the Roj detention camp in northeastern Syria, a facility operated by Kurdish forces that houses foreign nationals linked to extremist groups. The older sister has two daughters, while the younger sister has one, all born during their time in Syria.
The sisters' path to radicalization began in Norway, where they attended a Quran class led by a Salafi preacher recommended by their mother. The mother was reportedly worried that her daughters were assimilating too deeply into Western culture and turned to the local mosque for guidance. Her decision inadvertently introduced the sisters to an ideology that paved the way for their eventual involvement with ISIS.
In October 2013, at the ages of 16 and 19, the sisters secretly left Norway, telling their family they wanted to join the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. After crossing into Syria, they married ISIS fighters and settled into domestic roles within the caliphate, where they raised children and lived in homes seized from displaced Syrians, which ISIS justified as 'spoils of war.'
During ISIS's 'golden years' in 2014 and 2015, the sisters lived among the group's elite in Raqqa, Syria.
Despite their father's repeated efforts to bring them home, the sisters refused to return. Chat logs between the sisters and their brother revealed that they had no intention of leaving Syria, contradicting earlier claims made by their father that they were being held against their will.
Their father, Sadiq, a former Somali child soldier who fled to Norway in the 1990s, made several daring attempts to rescue his daughters. According to Åsne Seierstad's book Two Sisters, Sadiq allegedly collaborated with an armed group, possibly al-Nusra Front, to navigate Syria in search of his daughters. However, this claim remains unverified and is based on Sadiq's own accounts, which Seierstad acknowledges were not always reliable.
Sadiq's actions were driven by desperation and grief, but his misleading accounts ultimately undermined his credibility and hindered coordinated efforts to retrieve the sisters. Despite his persistent attempts, his daughters repeatedly rejected his pleas, telling him to return home to Norway.
Norway has kept the identities of the sisters private in accordance with its laws, as the possibility of an appeal remains open.