A senior official at the al-Aqtan prison in Raqqa, Syria, on Thursday pleaded with European and American officials to take control of the facility, before clashes between Syrian government troops and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) create more opportunities for Islamic State terrorists to escape.
Syrian officials are also suggesting Western powers take custody of the foreign-born ISIS fighters they have allowed to languish in Syrian prisons for years.
Al-Aqtan head of security Chiya Kobane posted a video message on Thursday in which he said the SDF can no longer manage the facility, so the world needed to step in and secure its ISIS prisoners.
“We have protected al-Aqtan prison until now, but it has reached its limit. Water and electricity are cut off, fuel is gone, and food supplies are running low,” said the security chief.
Kobane pleaded for an “international party” to “take over the prison so that we can reach our safe zones under international guarantees.” He said the SDF held out as long as it could, because it recognized its “humanitarian duty” to secure the prison.
The Kurdish-led SDF has been fighting with the Syrian army since December, as the central government of interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa seeks to bring the autonomous Kurdish region fully under his control. Each side consistently accuses the other of provoking conflicts and violating cease-fire agreements.
The SDF, a vital U.S. and European ally against the Islamic State, has long maintained prison camps where ISIS terrorists and their family members are held. Many of these prisoners are foreign fighters who traveled from other countries to join ISIS in Syria during its heydey. Their home governments have been reluctant to take them back, in part because they believe returning ISIS recruits, their wives, and their children could become security risks.
The SDF began falling back from the prison camps this week, under intense assault from Syrian government forces. A prison break involving hundreds of ISIS jihadis occurred at the al-Shaddadi prison camp on Monday.
Damascus has accused the SDF of releasing some of its prisoners to create a security crisis to put pressure on the government, while the SDF has accused jihadi fighters working for the Syrian army of releasing ISIS prisoners on purpose.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Thursday it has begun moving thousands of ISIS prisoners from northeastern Syria to Iraq, a surprise move that ameliorated some of the security risks from the SDF-Damascus clash. The first 150 relocated prisoners reportedly arrived at a “secure location” in Iraq on Thursday, with up to 7,000 more on standby to be transferred from Syria.
The Supreme Judicial Council of Iraq said it would “begin taking the proper legal measures against the defendants who are handed over and placed in the relevant correctional institutions.”
“Legal procedures will be applied to them without exception, in a manner that safeguards the rights of the victims and upholds the principle of the rule of law in Iraq,” the council said.
An Arab security source told The National on Thursday that CENTCOM does not fully trust the SDF nor the Syrian army to secure the ISIS prisoners.
“The SDF appears to have released ISIS prisoners from one jail in al-Shaddadi to create chaos. At the same time, Washington was worried about the presence of ISIS sympathisers among government forces and their tribal allies,” the source said.
The Arab source added that President Sharaa “knows how to handle ISIS prisoners,” but the force that he deployed to blitz the Kurdish-controlled region of Syria includes jihadi elements who are not so trustworthy.
“In any case, this was not Al Shara’s war with ISIS and many of the prisoners are not Syrian. Washington was bound to move some ISIS detainees outside Syria, regardless of who controls power there,” the source said.
“There are certainly rogue members of the Syrian Arab Army who are extremists,” confirmed Myles Caggins, a former spokesman for the coalition against the Islamic State.
Iraqi officials did not sound happy to have the enormous burden of the ISIS prisoners dropped on their laps so suddenly, but they appreciated the need to keep those dangerous detainees under lock and key.
“We have no other option but to bring them here under our direct supervision, rather than leave them in a fluid situation that could pose a threat to our national security,” an Iraqi security official told The National.
