Their son joined ISIS. Then they realized he had youngsters in a Syrian detention camp

In a small condominium exterior Minneapolis, I am watching two brown-haired brothers, ages 7 and 9, on a sofa taking part in chess. They’re talking Arabic sprinkled with English. They stare intently on the board, their little brows furrowed.

After a stretch of silence, the older boy strikes one among his items. “Check,” he proclaims with confidence.

“Smart move,” says their grandfather, sitting close by.

I am impressed by their abilities and focus. “How did you learn to play?” I ask. The grandfather places my query to them in Arabic. The older boy responds: al-sijn. I anticipate a translation.

“He learned it in the jail, he said,” the grandfather tells me. His spouse, their grandmother, nods. “In the jail,” she says.

Sijn — jail — is a phrase these boys use with startling frequency. It isn’t a phrase you anticipate to be a daily half of a kid’s vocabulary, not to mention uttered so matter-of-factly. However months earlier than they got here to Minnesota, these two boys have been residing, parent-less, in an huge desert camp in Syria for family members of ISIS militants. It’s variously known as a “displacement” or “detention” facility, however it’s successfully a jail. And it was their house for 5 years — the one house the youthful one actually remembers. They have been 2 and 4 after they arrived there.

Now, they’re residing with their American grandparents in the USA, a politically charged household reunification brokered by the U.S. authorities. The State Division calls it a mannequin for addressing an intractable legacy of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: what to do with the tens of 1000’s of individuals from all over the world being held in these Syrian camps, most of them the wives and offspring of males who belonged to the Islamic State, one of many world’s deadliest terrorist organizations.

An estimated 22 U.S. residents are among the many roughly 35,000 folks within the sprawling, primitive camps, together with about 17 American kids, in accordance with the State Division. The 2 Minnesota boys have been there till Might 2024, after they have been flown in a navy cargo airplane to John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport in New York to begin a brand new life within the American Midwest.

They landed within the camps by means of no fault of their very own: Their father is a naturalized American citizen who left the U.S. to hitch ISIS a decade in the past, and began a household whereas abroad. Nonetheless, many international locations are reluctant or unwilling to soak up the youngsters of ISIS fighters out of concern they might have been radicalized by extremists and will grow to be future jihadists. ISIS was recognized for its excessive brutality, together with beheadings and mass killings.

However U.S. officers say leaving youngsters within the camps — that are described as a humanitarian disaster, with restricted well being care and education and excessive ranges of violence — is the larger danger. The earlier they are often eliminated, officers say, the higher probability they’re going to have of a standard existence.

Each the Biden and Trump administrations have backed efforts to cut back the inhabitants of the camps. That entails taking again U.S. residents and pushing different nations, generally with American help, to repatriate their very own folks. The State Division below the present Trump presidency describes repatriations as a “high priority,” one which entails prosecuting some adults and returning kids to their house international locations.

“They deserve to be saved, I believe,” stated the Minnesota boys’ grandfather, Ahmed, who requested that NPR not use his final identify as a result of he’s involved concerning the safety of his household. “They are innocents and they should not bear the burden of their parents’ mistakes.”

“We couldn’t find him”

The last decade-long chain of occasions that introduced the 2 boys to the USA has created each disgrace and pleasure for his or her household.

The person who would grow to be their father, Abdelhamid, vanished throughout a household summer season trip to Morocco in 2015. He was an 18-year-old pupil on the time, nonetheless residing at house. His dad and mom — Ahmed and his spouse, who additionally requested to not be named for safety causes — found him lacking one morning. They scoured the home the place they have been staying, to no avail.

“We went from room to room, from floor to floor,” recalled Ahmed. “We couldn’t find him.”

They contacted hospitals and police precincts, questioning if he had left the home in a single day and been injured or gotten in an accident. Finally, Moroccan authorities checked a flight manifest and located that Abdelhamid had flown to Istanbul, Turkey.

His dad and mom have been baffled. Why would he do this? Their confusion shortly turned to shock: Moroccan police informed them their son’s habits match a well-recognized sample, and when younger Muslim males disappear with out saying the place they are going, they’re usually trying to hitch a radical group.

The police have been appropriate: Their eldest baby, who had grown up in suburban Minneapolis and gone to a U.S. highschool and neighborhood school, had crossed the Turkish border into Syria and, later, Iraq, and grow to be a member of ISIS.

“He left us,” Ahmed stated. “It’s hard for me to talk about the past. It hurts, to be honest with you. He was a decent guy, a helpful guy to us, an obedient guy, doing chores, going out with his friends, a normal guy…I mean, I couldn’t explain it.”

Investigators concluded that Abdelhamid, who was born in Morocco and moved along with his dad and mom to the U.S. in 1998, when he was 18 months outdated, had been drawn to a jihadist mindset as an adolescent by ISIS-run Twitter accounts promising a greater life, from camaraderie to free housing to the prospect to satisfy a partner.

In accordance with court docket data, he was “convinced by an expert ISIS recruiter” on social media to ask himself, “How can you in the West sit in your bedrooms knowing that Muslims are suffering overseas?” and to “test his faith and to become a real Muslim” by becoming a member of ISIS. On the time, the group was enslaving girls, finishing up mass executions, and staging terrorist assaults all over the world. Nonetheless, the advertising labored on him, and he selected to enter the ranks of ISIS.

His dad and mom, who turned naturalized U.S. residents within the mid-2000s, and their two different sons — Abdelhamid’s youthful brothers, who have been born within the U.S. — flew again to Minnesota with out him. Within the months that adopted, Abdelhamid sometimes reached out to his household with reassuring messages.

“He said, ‘I’m okay. Don’t worry about me,'” Ahmed recalled. Abdelhamid informed them he was finding out to grow to be a health care provider to assist injured folks; his dad and mom have been not sure if he was telling the reality. As months handed, Ahmed and his spouse stored their household scenario a secret from virtually everybody, even most of their family members.

Finally, Abdelhamid startled them once more with information that he had acquired a spouse and youngsters whereas overseas. In accordance with Abdelhamid, he had married the widow of one other ISIS fighter, and that girl had a son by her earlier husband. She and Abdelhamid then produced a son of their very own, elevating the 2 boys collectively as stepbrothers.

That meant Ahmed and his spouse have been now grandparents to a pair of kids that they had by no means met, residing a continent away, whose father belonged to an armed extremist group.

“Did you not know that it was a terrorist organization?”

Then, for practically a 12 months, Abdelhamid went silent. His dad and mom stated that they had no thought what had occurred to him — till they noticed a CBS Information report in September 2019, filmed in a jail in northeast Syria housing ISIS militants. Their son was there, behind bars, being interviewed on nationwide tv.

“Did you not know that it was a terrorist organization when you joined it?” the interviewer, Holly Williams, requested him.

“To be honest, I was kind of a conspiracy theorist a little bit,” Abdelhamid replied.

“But it’s a terrorist organization, Abdel. It’s a terrorist organization that’s carried out attacks,” Williams stated.

“Here’s the thing,” he responded. “People like me that see this, first of all, don’t really believe the news.”

On display screen, Abdelhamid had a stump for one arm and was limping from two damaged legs, wounds he stated he sustained in Iraq. The U.S. Division of Justice says he was injured in 2016 “while conducting military activities on behalf of ISIS.” His dad and mom barely acknowledged him. They have been shocked and relieved. Surprised by his situation. Relieved to know the place he was.

With Abdelhamid’s whereabouts now public, the U.S. authorities organized to convey him again to the States for legal prosecution. At that time, he had been in a Syrian jail for 18 months. In September 2020, at age 23, he was transferred into FBI custody, returned to Minnesota, and charged with offering materials help to a delegated international terrorist group.

However the place have been his two boys?

In accordance with Abdelhamid, his sons had been taken away from him when he surrendered to Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019, quickly after their mom was killed in Iraq. They have been 2 and 4 years outdated on the time. Abdelhamid did not realize it then, however it might be greater than 5 years earlier than he noticed them once more. Within the meantime, their grandparents — who knew the boys solely by means of pictures texted by their son — have been decided to seek out them.

Ahmed and his spouse had already misplaced one baby. They did not wish to lose one other two.

“I am writing to see if you can help me”

Their quest to find the boys led them to a former diplomat named Peter Galbraith, who had been a U.S. ambassador to Croatia, held quite a lot of roles on the United Nations, and served as a state senator in Vermont.

Galbraith has connections to Kurdish officers who assist oversee two camps in northeast Syria, known as al-Hol and Roj, that maintain largely the youngsters, widows, wives and different feminine family members of lifeless, captured and surrendered ISIS fighters. The camps are primarily populated by Iraqis and Syrians, but in addition embody folks from greater than 60 international locations, together with the USA.

In accordance with the State Division, an estimated 25,000 kids dwell within the camps, that are administered by the Democratic Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria, the civilian counterpart of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Among the kids have been born there. Some have been introduced there by their dad and mom. Some are orphans. Utilizing his Kurdish connections, Galbraith stated, he has helped get greater than two dozen kids of varied nationalities out of the camps.

After studying of Galbraith’s work, Ahmed wrote to him in August 2021. “Hello, Mr. Galbraith,” his e mail started. “I recently read [about] your involvement in helping…to locate missing children in Northern Syria. I am writing to see if you can help me in finding my two missing grandchildren.”

Galbraith agreed to supply help, and puzzled if the boys may be within the Syrian camps, which he describes as squalid locations unfit for long-term habitation: “Endless lines of tents, latrines that are disgusting…tents surrounded by wire so that nobody can leave,” he stated in an NPR interview.

Galbraith despatched pictures of the boys to camp officers, together with their names, dates of start, and their dad and mom’ names. Over the course of a 12 months, he made three journeys to Syria to seek for them. On his third go to, in November 2022, camp officers introduced two younger boys to satisfy him in a small workplace. Primarily based on their age and look, they gave the impression to be the youngsters he was trying to find. Galbraith stated the older boy appeared cautious, even distrustful.

“You can completely understand why they were fearful, why they thought no good would come from it,” Galbraith stated. “Basically, any time they encountered somebody they didn’t know, something bad had happened. Now this person shows up, a foreigner, an American.”

However that encounter started the method of eradicating them from the camps. After a DNA take a look at proved their identities, the boys have been transferred to an orphanage-like facility throughout the camps, the place they have been in a position to have weekly video calls with their grandparents in Minnesota.

Then a community of U.S. authorities businesses — the State and Protection departments, Citizenship and Immigration Providers, Customs and Border Safety, and the Workplace of Refugee Resettlement, amongst others — labored collectively on the authorized and logistical steps required to get the boys out of the camps and to the USA.

In Might 2024, after a 12 months and a half of difficult negotiations, the boys arrived in New York following a prolonged journey. They have been flown from Syria to Kuwait to Germany — the place they stopped to drop off the households of some European ISIS fighters — to their ultimate vacation spot within the U.S. Arrival footage at JFK airport present the boys wanting very critical, most likely slightly dazed, as relations they’d by no means met in individual greeted them with hugs and balloons. One of many boys holds a small American flag.

“They certainly were scared. I think they were also just confused,” stated lawyer Ian Moss, a former State Division official now in non-public apply who helped coordinate the boys’ exit from the camps. “They had been on 20-some hours of flights and are now arriving at 3 o’clock in the morning at JFK to meet with grandparents that they’d only seen via video. It had to be disorienting, to say the least.”

Nonetheless, added Moss, who was a part of the small crowd gathered in New York to welcome them, “To be there for that first moment when the boys were walked back to meet their grandparents…You could just feel that they were greeted with so much love.”

“Every day is a new day to them”

Late final September in Minnesota, I stood in entrance of a suburban condominium constructing with Ahmed and his spouse as they waited for his or her grandsons to return from their native public elementary college. They have been simply ending their first week of courses. A giant orange bus pulled into the car parking zone, and pressed in opposition to one of many home windows was a brown-haired little boy with a large smile, waving fortunately. He had noticed his grandparents, who lit up on the sight of him.

“Hey! Hey! How you doing?” Ahmed known as out because the boy, adopted by his older brother, ran to satisfy them. “How was school?” Ahmed’s spouse requested, wrapping her arms round them.

By then, the boys had been within the U.S. for about 5 months, and their grandparents have been exhibiting and educating them every part they may — from swimming to drawing to rising tomatoes to taking part in tennis — to make up for what they hadn’t realized within the camps, Ahmed stated.

“They’ve never been in school,” he defined. After they have been being held in Syria, “there was just a small classroom you can attend for maybe one hour,” he stated, however now “every day is a new day to them. Going to school and learning things they never saw or touched — a lot of things: fruits, toys, technology.”

The boys arrived within the U.S. talking primarily Arabic, however that is shortly altering. I peppered them with questions in English, and so they usually started answering earlier than their grandfather had completed translating what I might stated into Arabic.

They informed me their favourite exhibits are Shaun the Sheep, Tom and Jerry, and Mr. Bean. Their favourite toy is Spiderman. Their favourite meals are cereal, milk, oranges and bananas — however not apples. Their favourite English phrases are, “How are you?” and so they wish to apply asking the query, all the time responding with a cheerful “good!”

Once I first arrived on the household’s condominium, I used to be shocked to discover a toddler there. Ahmed, who’s 56, and his spouse, who’s 48, informed me that they had a shock being pregnant just a few years in the past, so they’re now dad and mom to a 3-year-old. That makes the 2 older boys, who are actually 8 and 10, the 3-year-old’s nephews. They name him their “baby uncle,” and their grandparents informed me that the boys suppose it is humorous they’ve an uncle who wears diapers.

It is a crowded home full of the sound of laughing kids who like consuming pizza, taking part in soccer and watching cartoons on YouTube. However the boys additionally casually inform tales concerning the deprivations of their earlier life, a reminder of how uncommon their childhoods have been by American requirements.

They’ve informed their grandparents, as an illustration, that after they lived within the Syrian camps, they might acquire erasers and crayons of their pockets, and later chew them like chewing gum. “I said, ‘Why?'” Ahmed recalled, “and they said, ‘Because there was not enough food.'” They’ve additionally described playtimes that concerned digging within the floor, mixing filth with water, and utilizing the combination to attempt to construct issues, like makeshift toys, Ahmed stated.

Ahmed and his spouse know the boys may want counseling some day to course of every part they’ve gone by means of, however “whatever bad things happened in the past, we just make them happy, and we are happy,” Ahmed informed me. His spouse nodded, saying that she needs the boys to “forget everything.”

I requested if she thinks they’re younger sufficient for that to be attainable. She informed me she believes they’ve already began to overlook.

“They know the difference” between their life within the camps and their life within the U.S., Ahmed stated. “And they love us more than anybody else because they know that we take care of them,” he added. “We want to erase anything bad in their memories. May God help us to achieve that.”

“Life is beautiful now”

In January 2021, Abdelhamid — after a number of months in custody again in the USA — admitted to being a “soldier of ISIS” and pleaded responsible to offering materials help to a delegated international terrorist group. Final 12 months he obtained a ten-year U.S. federal jail sentence. Throughout his June 2024 sentencing listening to in Minneapolis, he stated he regretted having joined a “death cult” and informed his dad and mom that his two sons are “the only good thing I’ve given you in a decade.”

His boys have been within the courtroom throughout his sentencing, marking the primary time Abdelhamid and his sons had seen one another since he surrendered to Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019 and was separated from his kids. He now telephones them commonly from behind bars.

In an interview with NPR, Abdelhamid known as himself “a traitor to my country” and stated he’s cooperating with U.S. authorities in different ISIS prosecutions – a declare verified by court docket data – and hopes to do counterterrorism and deradicalization work after he’s launched.

Abdelhamid’s dad and mom say as soon as his jail sentence ends, they need him to maneuver in with them and their grandchildren, their complete household below one roof.

“I always tell myself I forget whatever he’s done to us, as far as put us in this situation and this turmoil,” Ahmed stated. “I’ll always forgive him. He’s my son.”

Having their grandchildren with them, Ahmed and his spouse informed me, has been extra rejuvenating than tiring, regardless of the challenges of elevating young children throughout center age whereas each holding down different jobs.

“We feel younger. We feel more energized than before,” Ahmed stated. “We got our kid back and we got our grandkids back. I mean, life is beautiful now.”

They are saying they’re grateful for the USA authorities’s efforts to reunite their household. “I know America work[ed] hard to bring my grandkids” to the U.S., his spouse added. “Thank you so much. I appreciate America for that.”

And their household might develop even bigger: Abdelhamid says he additionally had a second spouse, a daughter, and a stepdaughter whereas abroad. As was the case along with his first spouse, his second spouse was the widow of an ISIS fighter, she had a baby from her earlier relationship, after which she and Abdelhamid bore a baby collectively. Galbraith can be trying to find these two women, however he informed NPR it’s unclear the place they’re or whether or not they’re alive.

“A serious humanitarian and a potential future security problem”

In fall 2024, officers from throughout the Center East, Europe and Asia convened at the USA Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., to confront a worldwide problem: decreasing the inhabitants of Syria’s al-Hol and Roj camps and addressing the dangers they pose, significantly to younger folks.

“More than 25,000 of the displaced persons are children growing up in dire conditions without access to education, opportunity or social support,” Richard Verma, a deputy secretary on the State Division till January 2025, informed the gathered crowd.

Of the roughly 35,500 folks being held within the camps — down from a peak of greater than 60,000 after ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed in 2019 — greater than 90 % are girls and youngsters, in accordance with the U.S. State Division. Roughly two-thirds are below age 18 and roughly half are below age 12.

As well as, roughly 8,600 former ISIS fighters are in jail services throughout northeast Syria. Since 2021, about 19,000 folks have been returned to their house international locations from the camps and prisons. The U.S. says it has repatriated 51 of its residents from Syria and Iraq since 2016, together with 30 kids. These U.S. repatriations additionally embody at the very least a dozen American adults who have been prosecuted upon return, some now in jail.

Getting youngsters out is particularly essential, Verma stated.

“As long as these children remain in the camps,” he warned, “the international community faces a serious humanitarian and a potential future security problem.”

The camps are closely populated by ISIS wives and widows who stay loyal to the Islamic State. Due to that, there’s concern they may radicalize the youngsters round them. “The older the children get, the more likely that they’re going to buy into the ideology there,” stated Galbraith. “That’s why it is so urgent to get the children out at a young age.”

Some international locations have resisted bringing house the offspring of ISIS fighters out of concern they could possibly be a security menace. In Finland, for instance, the 2019 repatriation of two younger orphaned kids of ISIS militants was “politically very, very toxic” and led to a “clear backlash,” Finnish ambassador Jussi Tanner stated in a 2021 interview with International Coverage. “But then gradually, with the successive repatriations,” he added, “the public reaction has become more and more muted.”

By the tip of 2023, practically 40 international locations had repatriated a few of their residents from the camps, together with about 6,000 kids, in accordance with a United Nations-affiliated report revealed in March 2024.

Moss, the previous State Division official who helped convey the Minnesota boys again to the USA, views the youngsters of ISIS fighters as harmless victims of poor selections made by their dad and mom. “Don’t punish the children for the sins of their fathers,” he stated. And he cautions that if the camps aren’t dismantled, they may grow to be coaching grounds for future terrorists, with worldwide penalties.

“You can pretend as if it is a problem somewhere else, but you don’t know what the future holds,” Moss stated. “That problem can be at your doorstep if you don’t do anything about it.”

U.S. officers say that prospect has grow to be much more worrisome because the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, which has raised fears of a attainable ISIS comeback. And whereas the Trump administration’s cuts to international assist earlier this 12 months briefly halted U.S. funding that helps help the camps, that funding was later restored.

“This Administration has been clear that as the dynamics in the region change, we cannot allow the security and humanitarian challenges posed by the displaced persons camps and detention facilities in northeast Syria to fester,” the State Division wrote in a press release to NPR. “Repatriation is the only durable solution to these challenges.”

Moss factors to the Minnesota household — Ahmed, his spouse and their grandchildren — as successful story up to now.

“These two boys are now living with their grandparents and building lives and doing well,” he stated, “and that we were able to keep a family together meant the United States was able to lead by example.”

Galbraith agrees. He visited them in Minnesota in November 2024 — the primary time he had seen them since figuring out them within the camps two years earlier — and says they have been “worlds apart” from the 2 frightened kids he met in Syria.

“They were happy, they were well-adjusted, they were relaxed. They were just healthy, normal boys, and it was wonderful,” Galbraith stated. “Just completely wonderful.”

This story was edited by Barrie Hardymon and Robert Little; the audio was produced by Monika Evstatieva. Analysis by Barbara Van Woerkom; artwork path and picture modifying by Emily Bogle; translation by Linah Mohammad and Fatma Tanis and audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez.