In Syria, German supporters of the "Islamic State" (IS) have also been released from custody. This confirms the Foreign Office on a written question by the FDP member of parliament Benjamin Strasser. "The information available to the Federal Government suggests," it states, "that among the IS adherents who have escaped from Kurdish prison camps in northern Syria are German nationals." Numbers called the government none.
According to SPIEGEL information, at least four women from Germany have escaped from a detention center in northern Syria since the beginning of the Turkish military invasion. Whether even male IS fighters from Germany managed to escape, is not known. According to an internal list of the Federal Government in Syria last 84 supporters of the terrorist militia were imprisoned with a German passport.
"We have to assume a barely calculable security risk if German IS fighters have fled Syrian prison camps," says FDP expert Strasser.
He accuses the federal government of failure: "This problem would not exist if one had not put off dealing with the Germans interned in Syria and pressed for a decision." Anyone who demands that other states take back their criminal compatriots can not refuse to bring back German IS fighters and bring them to justice here, according to Strasser.
The United States and the Kurds in northern Syria had repeatedly forced Germany to withdraw for almost two years - in vain. "The federal government has misappropriated the problem," criticized the terrorism expert Guido Steinberg of the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP).
Conservation chief Thomas Haldenwang warned in the current SPIEGEL against a possible return of escaped IS fighters to Europe, "unnoticed in the worst case," said Haldenwang: "Here, the security authorities must be vigilant."