to the night, the homecoming is an event of enormous emotional and spiritual importance to his people, says organizer russell, eagle bear. there's a re awakening of our people. and that's an important, you know, we need to, we can be living in grief all the time. and on the following day, the children were laid to rest in the local cemetery home at last, in the land where they belong. robert old al jazeera mission, south dakota, ah, logan, i'm fully battle with the headlines on al jazeera, japanese chancellor has described the situation in areas hard is hit by us. surveil and terrifying angular merkel has visited the village of showed as a massive cleanup gets on the way across western europe. more than 180 people have died in the flat. is this a 2nd?

it's terrifying. i would say there is no word in the german language to describe this devastation. but what i witness is incredibly comforting. it's how people are sticking together, how they helping each other this solidarity among people. the afghan government and taliban have issued a joint statement following another round of talks in the country capital. they've agreed to speed up discussions aimed at finding common ground by the taliban. expressed disagreement with proposals on the political roadmap and constitution for granting span tied by negotiators are demanding the release of 70000 prisoners. a major border crossing between pakistan and afghanistan has been partially reopen, draft of the county been seized control of the gun side on wednesday. if an economic lifeline force have enough ganeth done with agricultural exports and other goods passing through it, the afghan government has launched an operation to retake it was phones belonging to hundreds of journalists, activists, and politicians have been hacked by government using spyware,

owned by israeli surveillance company n s o group, that's according to the latest investigation conducted by 16 media outlets. investigators say, report is working for you in for international news organizations were targeted by the pegasus spyware. and the you case by ministers urging the public to be cautious as covey. 19 restrictions are relaxed on monday, august johnston is south isolating. after having contact with the health secretary who tested positive for her one of eyes despite being vaccinated. and south africa's friday been task call for unity as he joined cleanup efforts in one of the cities hardest hit. my looting advise, seated around post promised before we view live visiting. so wait till after more than a week of the wise fine. and since the end of apartheid, more than $200.00 people were killed during protest sponsored by the jailing of former president jacob sioux. mom. those are the headlines on al jazeera. i have more news for you. after inside story news,

news, news. belgium takes back 6 women and their children stuck in a syrian camp for ice or fight or some other european countries have been more reluctant to do the same. so to the families of captured, foreign fighters be allowed to return home. this is inside story. ah hello and welcome to the program. i'm a jim, jim. it's been 2 years since i saw was defeated in syria. thousands of fighters and their families were captured and held in refugee camps. they include women and

children from europe, who followed their husbands to syria. governments have been debating whether to take them back on friday, belgium repatriated, 6 women, and their 10 children. the government decided in march to allow mothers and kids under 12 to return voluntarily. belgium's federal prosecutor says the women will be charged with terror fences and the children taken into care. other foreigners in the syrian camps are urging their governments to let them return home. we've got here so, but not least we want our children to learn only our children should be able to read it, right and count. we want them to have normal cooling. we want our children to develop, they have no development here. the only thing they do is that the throw stones and jump on cars just because they have nothing to do here. with them. for you in has urged 57 nations to repatriate their citizens from camps fighting humanitarian concerns. more than 64000 people live in a hole and rose camps in northern syria,

where conditions are dire. france has allowed 35 children to return since 2019, but the nation has largely resisted repatriation. in germany, $22.00 women and children arrived home by the end of last year, out of an estimated $1200.00 citizens. russian media say at least 150 children had been repatriated as february last year. the u. k has removed the citizenship of many people linked to iceland, syrian camps. one of the most controversial cases was that of school girl. show me mom, back home, who fled to syria in 2015. ah . all right, let's bring on, i guess, joining us on skype from carlos eman jawad l to me, me a research fellow at george washington university's program on extremism and joining us from beggars close to bravo spain. chris phillips, former head of the u. k. national counter terrorism security office, a warm welcome to you both. thanks so much for joining us on inside story today.

amy, let me start with you today. you have been to at least one of these camps and syria . i believe it was in 2016. what did you see there? how dire were the conditions and from your perspective is the repatriation of mothers and children the right strategy. thank you by me. yeah, just to clarify, i was in. it was during 2018 actually. so that's the more recent period i was in the camp in a nice area which is just north of the day. it was a separate section of the camp dedicated to the foreign mostly foreign mothers that were also iraqi, considering that by in georgia of suspect, i s members to be members who will be helping tension they conditions were very dia and i didn't see how sustainable to keep holding these women and

children in these can indefinitely. i mean the country do need take them by collectively not just they take the children back and leave the women behind because and because for instance, it is also in talking to the women myself. none of the goals would openly admit to being men having team members of the organization involved. but this is something for their home countries to investigate when they take them back. because there were women involved organizationally in the state. and as for the children, well that they didn't choose people in those circumstances and is national of the country to which they long have a right, some kind of, you know, country cruise. let me get your perspective on this. what do you think is repatriation when it comes to women and children the right thing to do and why? well, i think it's incredibly difficult situation. an old countries across the world to

be having the same issue with whether they should read these people or not. certainly the children of nothing wrong and i can see no reason why they shouldn't be returned to the country where they are sickly. they have a passport and a right to live. but i think the women are a different thing altogether and they chose to be there just been a member of this. it's something that is so bad that and the things that they're talking about that they want for their children were exactly the things that they were there. organization was stopping for the, for the rest of the syrian people. so i think the children have a right to come back. i think the parents, the, the mothers and fathers, really, they committed the crimes in that country and that's where they should be punished . i'm and let me ask you something else. in december, germany in finland, repatriated women and children from these camps. last month, the netherland repatriated dutch woman and her 2 sons,

and now belgium has repatriated 6 mothers and 10 children. does this signify to you that we will start seeing more european countries repatriated, their citizens going forward? i think the repatriation being it is not a bill is backed by duping the repaid raisins will eventually happen. but it looks to me as if it will be a long and protracted pros. they'll be a lot of kicking back again to try to stop doing so and issue a political pressure and so on. but i mean, i don't, i don't mean to waste and you have, we just leave, leave them in those can. i don't think i can just continue indefinitely. and on the issue, i had to be subject to legal prose that i think the bible, the big problem you have is that this is ne, syria, which is control by if i go control by the ministration,

know by the central government in damascus. so where are they going to be? if you were going to find them in theory, if you're going to try mothers and fathers of the, of these children and they're going to fight him inferior. whereas the due recognition then for all those legal processors, surely would make more sense to do it back back in the home countries. chris same and there was just talking about some of the political pressures involved in the decision to try and repatriate some of these european women and children to their home countries. let me ask you when it comes to the repatriation process, how difficult is it overall? i'm talking about legally i'm talking about logistically, what are the challenges involved? well, i think the big logistical problem that you see to begin with is actually proven. the children are who they say they are and, and the women, they say that, but then you come down to the fact that this is, this is view and it's often shown the view that they'll come back to their own

country. they will go in front of a cool, and the call will probably find him guilty and they'll go away and they want to live in that country because they will be in prison. but the truth of the matter is that none of these women will my certainly fight much of a trial in their own country if they are convicted and let's not, let's not forget the difficulties of convicted someone of an offense that happened when the other side of the world where a lot of the victims the witnesses have been killed. how are you going to get to a trial in a western country? the put some into prison for a sustained period of time you're, you're not. and the truth of the matter is they will go back to their own countries . they will be released into society, and society will pick up the problem in the bill with it. and i think we need to be realistic. you know, courts in the west are not designed to deal with this kind of this kind of offense . and you're chris, there say that chords in the west really are designed to try to have these kinds of

trials. i want to ask you 1st, if some of the women who have returned to these countries are actually facing trial, i mean, are these trials actually being conducted currently? and secondly, do you believe that's the case? do you believe the trials in the court in these countries are able to actually prosecute these cases? my time on john specifics about trials involving women might have be involved in issues and follow the males to way involved in this problem. a male i was involved in the design then was repatriated to its own country. but i don't think it's entirely unfeasible to be able to hold a trial. i mean, if the issue with trying to establish whether a particular woman was a member or was that the organization be involved with the state, that's not the right. that's not necessarily the committee unfeasible. the crew is

no breakdown of all these by and they did leave all compiled extensive bureaucratic men, bureaucratic records on members of the organization, family details. it's not the old day. all those data have been lost to retrieve ably on that 30 the case. you don't have to rely on witness testimony, your testimony, people who, who, who, who are disease. so i would be skeptical of it being already unfeasible to try women on this, you know, drive people on this. you know, i know that having been members of the bank state, i'm in a quick follow up with regards to a point that you were making. i know that there is a you in investigative mechanism unit had that was essentially set up to try to help collect evidence when it came to crimes committed by i saw atrocities committed by isolate. do you happen to know if this investigative mechanism is

assisting with any of the trials that are going on? i can say yes actually that some of the evidence gathered has actually been been used in court proceeding specifically in trying to establish whether a sickly national, remember a state and he'd been repatriated and his name actually did turn up in the database. all the records that i think could be found by, by iraqi forces. so this is why i say it's not necessarily it's not 9300, feasible to conduct these trials. i mean, for example, one criteria and you can establish whether someone was

a member of the planning stage and whether that person had something, the goal is to have a number. and that's a very be a mom, a membership with you, your aquatic because chris, i know you were talking about the security concerns when it comes to repay treating you know, some of these women. i want to ask you about the fact that, you know, rights groups have repeatedly warned that the situation in these camps they risk developing into not just a human rights disaster. but many of these analysts and rights groups have said that these camps, if they are left the way they are, could potentially be breeding grounds for radicalization. so how much does that concern you and do you think that the threat from the potential radicalization in these camps is greater than the threat of the repatriation process when it comes to security, especially in the u. k. well, we have to remember that these are radicalized people that they've been radicalized with saying that members of this been very radicalized. so to say that it getting

worse is a little bit ridiculous. the only thing i would agree on the obviously we have now another group of children that are likely to grow up into potential issues and radicalized individual sites. so the argument i think is more to take away the children from the parents, which is not a, not always a very good thing seen as a good thing to do, to remove them from the influence of the adults that are in those groups. but what i, what i would say is that the thought of bringing people back to the u. k to germany, to italy, etc, is going to solve the problem when we still have all this fighting different names, sometimes across africa. so you know, the battle and the war again is not over. it's still there. i'm looking to, to regroup so, so we have to be a little bit bowl. careful about, you know, the pressure that we put on our society to bring people back that are then going to

radicalize people. ready in our own countries, i'm whether it's the u. k, or anywhere else, actually bringing people back and begun. so, mima, boom is a good example of this where, you know, she is that she's saying that she's saying that the leader expect to be, even though she probably wasn't. that's all we're jane as a post the girl of someone that can get away with it. and come back to their own country and say, i think the u. k is, is very low, a lot of return. but i think the children are a different matter and i just thought them becoming by the problems in the future. maybe they should be returned to their own countries. chris, may i just follow up with you about one aspect of what you're talking about when you're talking about children, potentially being separated from their parents? do we yet know what the legal procedure is for that? how do governments go about trying to repatriate children if say the parents don't agree with that decision or don't want to be separated from them? do you happen to know what goes into that and what the challenges are?

well, no, i don't. and i would suggest it probably won't happen unless the parents agree to it. but, but we've already heard that the idea in belgium is to bring the women back. they go to prison, potentially with that that they will go to prison and the children taken into care and then you know, 2 years, worst case scenario, the parents are returned and they can go back to their parents. so i think we've got to be realistic. listen with these people that that have been fighting, and i hate the west. do we bring them back? because at the end of the day it's due. they're not going to go to prison. if they go to prison, it will be for a very short period of time. they will be living in your local communities, potentially causing the problems that the children will be going to the schools with your children. and i always think it's the wealthy people complicate about this,

but actually they will go and living in the future on the other people that would be rather close because of them returning should be, should be considered as well. i'm in the reporting on this subject when it comes to children being repatriated is that they will go when to care. do we know what that entails? do they get the kind of psycho social care psychological support that they need going forward? because these are children that have faced, you know, severe amounts of trauma? correct? yes, they had base plumber and many of them would. they lost their parents. so last one that parents sold, the last i said, laying on more than one 5th, laying down and day. it's not clear how one is back home will be able to provide appropriate care or appropriate people that important not playing college is stora expert in that field. so i can come in to deeply dev it it,

it, it will definitely pose. it will definitely pose a challenge, but i think longer you leave them in the camp, then the greater the challenges would pose in the future. i mean, suppose you just less than that was actual kind of future is that or then in this, in this region control, by your point, is it ministration? who's on status? in looking in the future, it is not entirely clear with the way theory has been divided and the been divided into these different zones of tobacco control barriers or empowers exist name to be happy created a frozen state static conflicts. but then you have these buried, empties of origin and tyrants. we don't have the national recognition, christine repatriation to belgium. that seems to be a result of a shift in policy by the belgian government. do you happen to know what brought

about that shift? and also for the time being at least will repeat variations only happen on a case by case basis. well, that's a way of looking at the moment, but i think each country is coming under pressure to take back their own people and that's understandable. i don't think because one the, these people in their country and certainly be the guarding for them to be spending all their lives, having to go on a lot of women and children. so i can understand what is happening and i am, and i totally agree with is point to view that leaving children in those counts is not a great thing to do. but of course, you do have to bear in mind that if you bring the children back, then it seems you're going to have to bring the parents by as well. and if you bring the parents back, you know, let's not pretend that these people are going to go to prison for 152030 years because they're not going to be in society and, and all the problems that causes them. and the view that the police can monitor them and keep them on the violence. you know, realistically,

that's not going to happen. so we are just putting our own people in a lot of danger. i mean, do you have response to, chris was just saying that it looked like it looked like you were reacting. i mean, my, my general view of it in the grand scheme of things is that if i commit a crime abroad and i get tried in the, in that country and the do president time war reason is that a start back country from that country going to call me back to my own, even though i might, if i committed that crime, that they, it was bad, good. whatever. i might not pose the rate back to the community, to the community in my own country. and so i apply that general kind of analogy to this situation. i do understand the issue of the mothers and part of these children,

my post security bay door day issue of having being back alive. but again, i think burdening an unrecognized administration doesn't itself have a lot of money and resources to deal with these kinds of challenges. i don't see that as bad as my grand you will be helping chris, as we've mentioned in our conversation on the show today, this is all very legally complicated. do you happen to know if there is a timeline that must be adhered to by which countries you know, would have to repatriate their citizens and have them go on trial by a certain amount of time? i mean, is there any kind of statute limitations that's coming up in any of these cases? well i think because of the nature of the offense is it would be an extended period of time. of course, every country is different. i think the, the realistic view though is that these people won't really be prosecuted if they

return to the country that they do. it will be very well known a very minor offense, but the lowest nature of the offense, which is membership devices. and there are many people in this country that have been in prison for over the years. so it's, it's, the problem is much greater than that. i think the answer probably is for those countries that are asking the cur than others to, to imprison these people is to make sure that those people are funding to give the prison camps themselves the funding needed by the western or the, the other company. this is not just the western problem, this is a worldwide problem in india. pakistan and others have got the same issue with, with, with attempted recreations. i'm, and let me ask you this. does the fact that more countries least seemingly for now we're starting to repatriate more of their citizens in europe?

is that something that you could see is being used as a precedent by people that are currently in those camps who want to return home? i mean, could they potentially use as an example, the cases of these case by case repatriation at the european court of human rights for example. i could see it being, i could see them. you could be some of them using that. the issue of precedent as a means to justify the being repatriated by the president. then given that you can ration to lead to a mass wave of re patients, i think is more on that i'd be more, i see this more being individual case by case in a protracted process. chris, do you believe there should be more of a coordinated international response when it comes to this? because you have countries like the us that are urging other countries to

repatriate their citizens. and then you have the political reality on the ground in parts of europe and also in the u. k. whereby these political leaders do not want to do so it's a very unpopular choice. do you think there will be more of a coordinated response going forward and should there be more of a coordinated response? loving yes. is the truth of the matter and i, you know, well, so i don't really, i don't really want these people to come back. i think probably it's going to happen and it will happen over a protected period of time. and as has been said, you know, the leaving the kids in there is not a great, great thing. they going to, going to be much more difficult to, to socialize when you do finally return to the countries that they find that they've got passports or so. so i think that will be a slow trickle of people returning. i think almost under the radar of the media and the public

a but i think we shouldn't underestimate the difficulties that this will bring when they do return. and when they do have to go live next door to someone or that they have to send their children to the local schools. because, you know, it's the, the communities that have to deal with the problems. and the, you know, the mostly families across the u. k. really don't want these people to be to be living next door to them is quite simple and i think it's it's, it's a, it's going to be a popular decision. but i think it will be something district that over the next 2 or 3 years, probably at speeding up as, as time goes on. all right, well, we have run out of time, so we're going to have to leave our conversation there. thanks so much for all of our guest aimen joe added to mimi and chris phillips. and thank you to for watching . you can see this and all of our previous programs. again, anytime by visiting our website, algeria dot com and for further discussion, go to our facebook page. that's facebook dot com forward slash

a j inside story. you can also join the conversation on twitter. our handle is at a j inside story. for me, my job and the whole team here. bye for now. the news news. news. news. something was going to change as anything really changed. this is just demick violent. that needs to be addressed at its core. we are in a race against the variance. know what to say. we are all saying we're looking at the world as it is right now, not the world. we like it to be. the devil is always going to be in the house. the

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ah me ah ah hello, i'm fully bachelor window with a look at our main stories on al jazeera german, chancellor anglo merkel has described the scenes in flood damage villages as surreal and ghostly. and the crisis in parts of europe is only getting worse, more heavy rain as it parts of eastern germany, austria and the czech republic. at least a 183 people, confirmed dead, but that number is expected to rise at brady report, some shoulder in germany. destruction on a scale hardly a man.