“I believe there are many children with serious and potentially life-threatening injuries who remain in this prison and I believe some of those children are … from Western states.” The Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led militia in charge of the prisons, have remained tight-lipped about the fate of the detained boys. The Telegraph understands the SDF has rejected requests from NGOs to remove injured and sick boys, saying they pose a security risk. Bo Viktor Nylund, Unicef’s representative in Syria, toured the prison in February and told The New York Times that the detained boys lacked food and medicine. something the SDF has denied. “Teenagers inside the detention center receive three main meals on a daily basis, clean water and are provided with health care by the medical staff of the detention center,” the SDF responded. They acknowledged that 121 of his fighters and guards were killed in the January siege, along with more than 380 fighters and prisoners. But they never said how many minors were injured or died and did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Telegraph. “The silence on the numbers raises even more questions about why dozens of governments are allowing an underfunded, embattled, non-state actor to manage a population of tens of thousands of foreign IS suspects and family members, none of whom have ever before a court, much less charged with a crime,” said Leta Taylor, deputy director and counterterrorism chief at Human Rights Watch.
“Cubs of the Caliphate”
After the final battle against Islamic State in 2019, the SDF was left holding around 10,000 men suspected of links to the extremist group. The SDF placed these detainees in about a dozen detention centers in northeastern Syria, mostly in converted schools and hospitals. About 750 boys under the age of 18 were imprisoned along with the adults. The SDF referred to them as “Caliphate Cubes”, the term used for its trained child soldiers. But many of the boys had never even held a gun. Some were taken from their mothers as teenagers because they were feared to be a nuisance in detention camps that held women and younger children. Most of the boys jailed were Syrian and Iraqi, but around 150 were from elsewhere, including at least one from the UK, according to UN experts. Like adults, these boys have languished in a legal vacuum. As non-state actors, the SDF lacks jurisdiction to prosecute foreign detainees, while many countries have ignored calls from the anti-Islamic State coalition, the US and local authorities to take back their citizens.
