Suspected Woman IS Member Returned To Germany

Frankfurt am Main, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Nov, 2019 ) :A woman believed to have belonged to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group and her three children has arrived back in her home country Germany, police told AFP Sunday.

The woman is the first adult female IS member to have been returned through official channels to Germany.

Named only as Laura H., the 30-year-old from Hesse state arrived at Frankfurt airport late Saturday on a flight from from Erbil, Iraq.

While Laura H. was not immediately arrested on arrival, she remains the subject of an investigation on suspicion of membership of a terrorist organisation as well as failure to properly care for her children, news weekly Der Spiegel reported citing security sources.

Her passport has been confiscated and she has been banned from leaving the country, while her children are being entrusted to a close reative, Spiegel added.

According to the magazine, she travelled in 2016 from Giessen in central Germany to Syria with her children and her husband, a Somalia-born US citizen, where she joined IS.

Following her husband's reported killing and her own capture by Kurdish security forces, Laura H. claims to have turned away from IS ideology.

A US aid organisation helped bring her to Erbil from the Al-Hol prison camp in northeastern Syria, Spiegel reported.

Germany had already brought home a handful of orphans, but no adults until Saturday.

Austria, Belgium, Britain and France have also repatriated some orphaned children, while the United States has repatriated several women and their children.