In Retour Caliphate – The Legacy of a Battlefield Dutch war-and crisis-journalist Sinan Can travels to Northern Syria, the place where IS was beaten in 2019. He managed to get permission to interview three European IS-prisoners.
Hundreds of these European IS-men are in detention in Kurdish territory and want to return to their homeland. They know the Kurdish authorities can’t bring them to their courts. The Kurds are now still in control of the situation, but are afraid these prisoners will escape from the camps. They constantly try to break out.
Sinan Can talks to the European IS-jihadi’s to find out what motivated them to join IS and what they now think of the ideology. What has been their part in the Caliphate and what is, at this moment, their State of Hate?
Sinan Can, dutch war -and crisisjournalist: “For more than ten years I travelled through the Middle East and spoke to a lot of IS-men. I have never met someone who regrets. I wanted to talk with these jihadi’s who are now in detention and want to go back to their homeland. Will they bring their ideology with them to Europe? How do they think about justice to the victims of IS?”
Sinan also talks with Yazidi-women who were recently freed. They tell about the horrible experiences in the Caliphate. They were sold as slaves, raped and tortured. They can’t return to their communities, because their children, born when they were enslaved and whose fathers are IS-men, are not accepted by their own people.
Sinan Can, Daniëlle van Lieshout
