Years after their son left the U.S. to hitch ISIS, a Minnesota couple realized they’d two younger grandsons trapped in a Syrian desert camp. They have been decided to rescue them.
Dion MBD for NPR
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Dion MBD for NPR
In a small condo outdoors 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 certainly one of his items. “Examine,” he broadcasts with confidence.
“Good transfer,” says their grandfather, sitting close by.
I am impressed by their expertise and focus. “How did you be taught to play?” I ask. The grandfather places my query to them in Arabic. The older boy responds: al-sijn. I anticipate a translation.
“He realized it within the jail, he mentioned,” the grandfather tells me. His spouse, their grandmother, nods. “Within the jail,” she says.
Sijn — jail — is a phrase these boys use with startling frequency. It’s not 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 dwelling, parent-less, in an huge desert camp in Syria for relations of ISIS militants. It’s variously known as a “displacement” or “detention” facility, however it’s successfully a jail. And it was their dwelling for 5 years — the one dwelling the youthful one actually remembers. They have been 2 and 4 once they arrived there.
Now, they’re dwelling with their American grandparents in the US, 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 hundreds of individuals from around the globe 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 individuals 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 Could 2024, once they have been flown in a army 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 via 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 nations are reluctant or unwilling to soak up the kids of ISIS fighters out of concern they could have been radicalized by extremists and will change into future jihadists. ISIS was recognized for its excessive brutality, together with beheadings and mass killings.
However U.S. officers say leaving children within the camps — that are described as a humanitarian disaster, with restricted well being care and education and excessive ranges of violence — is the better threat. The earlier they are often eliminated, officers say, the higher likelihood they will have of a traditional existence.
Each the Biden and Trump administrations have backed efforts to scale back the inhabitants of the camps. That entails taking again U.S. residents and pushing different nations, typically with American help, to repatriate their very own individuals. The State Division beneath the present Trump presidency describes repatriations as a “excessive precedence,” one which includes prosecuting some adults and returning kids to their dwelling nations.
“They need to be saved, I imagine,” mentioned the Minnesota boys’ grandfather, Ahmed, who requested that NPR not use his final title as a result of he’s involved in regards to the safety of his household. “They’re innocents and they need to not bear the burden of their dad and mom’ errors.”
“We could not discover him”
The last decade-long chain of occasions that introduced the 2 boys to the US has created each disgrace and pleasure for his or her household.
The person who would change into their father, Abdelhamid, vanished throughout a household summer time trip to Morocco in 2015. He was an 18-year-old pupil on the time, nonetheless dwelling at dwelling. 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 flooring to flooring,” recalled Ahmed. “We could not discover 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 advised them their son’s conduct match a well-known 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 group faculty, had crossed the Turkish border into Syria and, later, Iraq, and change into a member of ISIS.
“He left us,” Ahmed mentioned. “It is exhausting for me to speak in regards to the previous. It hurts, to be trustworthy with you. He was a good man, a useful man to us, an obedient man, doing chores, going out together with his associates, a traditional man…I imply, I could not clarify it.”
Investigators concluded that Abdelhamid, who was born in Morocco and moved together with his dad and mom to the U.S. in 1998, when he was 18 months previous, 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 fulfill a partner.
In keeping with court docket information, he was “satisfied by an skilled ISIS recruiter” on social media to ask himself, “How are you going to within the West sit in your bedrooms realizing that Muslims are struggling abroad?” and to “take a look at his religion and to change into an actual Muslim” by becoming a member of ISIS. On the time, the group was enslaving ladies, finishing up mass executions, and staging terrorist assaults around the globe. Nonetheless, the advertising labored on him, and he selected to enter the ranks of ISIS.
His dad and mom, who grew to become 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 mentioned, ‘I am okay. Don’t be concerned about me,'” Ahmed recalled. Abdelhamid advised them he was learning to change into a health care provider to assist injured individuals; his dad and mom have been uncertain if he was telling the reality. As months handed, Ahmed and his spouse saved their household scenario a secret from nearly everybody, even most of their relations.
Finally, Abdelhamid startled them once more with information that he had acquired a spouse and youngsters whereas overseas. In keeping 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 youngsters they’d by no means met, dwelling a continent away, whose father belonged to an armed extremist group.
“Did you not know that it was a terrorist group?”
Then, for practically a 12 months, Abdelhamid went silent. His dad and mom mentioned they’d no concept 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 group whenever you joined it?” the interviewer, Holly Williams, requested him.
“To be trustworthy, I used to be type of a conspiracy theorist a bit bit,” Abdelhamid replied.
“Nevertheless it’s a terrorist group, Abdel. It is a terrorist group that is carried out assaults,” Williams mentioned.
“This is the factor,” he responded. “Folks like me that see this, initially, do not actually imagine the information.”
On display, Abdelhamid had a stump for one arm and was limping from two damaged legs, wounds he mentioned he sustained in Iraq. The U.S. Division of Justice says he was injured in 2016 “whereas conducting army actions on behalf of ISIS.” His dad and mom barely acknowledged him. They have been surprised and relieved. Shocked by his situation. Relieved to know the place he was.
With Abdelhamid’s whereabouts now public, the U.S. authorities organized to carry him again to the States for felony 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 assist to a chosen overseas terrorist group.
However the place have been his two boys?
In keeping 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 previous on the time. Abdelhamid did not understand 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 via pictures texted by their son — have been decided to search out them.
Ahmed and his spouse had already misplaced one baby. They did not wish to lose one other two.
“I’m writing to see when you will help me”
Peter Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia who traveled to Syria to assist discover Ahmed’s grandsons.
Lucy Lu for NPR
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Lucy Lu for NPR
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 kids, widows, wives and different feminine relations of lifeless, captured and surrendered ISIS fighters. The camps are primarily populated by Iraqis and Syrians, but additionally embody individuals from greater than 60 nations, together with the US.
In keeping with the State Division, an estimated 25,000 kids reside within the camps, that are administered by the Democratic Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria, the civilian counterpart of the Syrian Democratic Forces. A few of the kids have been born there. Some have been introduced there by their dad and mom. Some are orphans. Utilizing his Kurdish connections, Galbraith mentioned, he has helped get greater than two dozen kids of varied nationalities out of the camps.
A girl walks within the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria’s Hasakeh province on Jan. 30. Tens of hundreds of largely ladies and youngsters linked to the Islamic State group have been dwelling right here for years.
Bernat Armangue/AP
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Bernat Armangue/AP
After studying of Galbraith’s work, Ahmed wrote to him in August 2021. “Hiya, Mr. Galbraith,” his e-mail started. “I just lately learn [about] your involvement in serving to…to find lacking kids in Northern Syria. I’m writing to see when you will help me find my two lacking grandchildren.”
Galbraith agreed to supply help, and questioned if the boys may be within the Syrian camps, which he describes as squalid locations unfit for long-term habitation: “Countless traces of tents, latrines which can be disgusting…tents surrounded by wire in order that no one can depart,” he mentioned in an NPR interview.
Galbraith despatched pictures of the boys to camp officers, together with their names, dates of beginning, 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 fulfill him in a small workplace. Primarily based on their age and look, they appeared to be the kids he was trying to find. Galbraith mentioned the older boy appeared cautious, even distrustful.
“You possibly can fully perceive why they have been fearful, why they thought no good would come from it,” Galbraith mentioned. “Mainly, any time they encountered any individual they did not know, one thing unhealthy had occurred. Now this individual exhibits 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 inside the camps, the place they have been capable of have weekly video calls with their grandparents in Minnesota.
Then a community of U.S. authorities companies — the State and Protection departments, Citizenship and Immigration Companies, 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 US.
In Could 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 photos at JFK airport present the boys trying very severe, most likely a bit 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 actually have been scared. I believe they have been additionally simply confused,” mentioned lawyer Ian Moss, a former State Division official now in personal follow who helped coordinate the boys’ exit from the camps. “They’d been on 20-some hours of flights and at the moment are arriving at 3 o’clock within the morning at JFK to fulfill with grandparents that they’d solely seen through video. It needed to be disorienting, to say the least.”
Ian Moss is a former official on the U.S. Division of State who helped coordinate the grandsons’ journey to the US.
Caroline Gutman for NPR
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Caroline Gutman for NPR
Nonetheless, added Moss, who was a part of the small crowd gathered in New York to welcome them, “To be there for that first second when the boys have been walked again to fulfill their grandparents…You would simply really feel that they have been greeted with a lot love.”
“Daily is a brand new day to them”
Late final September in Minnesota, I stood in entrance of a suburban condo 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 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! The way you doing?” Ahmed known as out because the boy, adopted by his older brother, ran to fulfill them. “How was college?” 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 instructing them every thing 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 mentioned.
“They’ve by no means been at school,” he defined. After they have been being held in Syria, “there was only a small classroom you’ll be able to attend for perhaps one hour,” he mentioned, however now “on daily basis is a brand new day to them. Going to high school and studying issues they by no means noticed or touched — loads of issues: fruits, toys, expertise.”
The boys arrived within the U.S. talking primarily Arabic, however that is shortly altering. I peppered them with questions in English, they usually usually started answering earlier than their grandfather had completed translating what I might mentioned into Arabic.
They advised 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?” they usually prefer to follow asking the query, at all times responding with a cheerful “good!”
After I first arrived on the household’s condo, I used to be shocked to discover a toddler there. Ahmed, who’s 56, and his spouse, who’s 48, advised me they’d a shock being pregnant a number of years in the past, so they’re now dad and mom to a 3-year-old. That makes the 2 older boys, who at the moment are 8 and 10, the 3-year-old’s nephews. They name him their “child uncle,” and their grandparents advised me that the boys assume it is humorous they’ve an uncle who wears diapers.
It is a crowded home crammed with 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 in regards to the deprivations of their earlier life, a reminder of how uncommon their childhoods have been by American requirements.
They’ve advised their grandparents, for example, that once they lived within the Syrian camps, they might acquire erasers and crayons of their pockets, and later chew them like chewing gum. “I mentioned, ‘Why?'” Ahmed recalled, “they usually mentioned, ‘As a result of there was not sufficient meals.'” They’ve additionally described playtimes that concerned digging within the floor, mixing grime with water, and utilizing the combination to attempt to construct issues, like makeshift toys, Ahmed mentioned.
Ahmed and his spouse know the boys would possibly want counseling some day to course of every thing they’ve gone via, however “no matter unhealthy issues occurred prior to now, we simply make them completely happy, and we’re completely happy,” Ahmed advised me. His spouse nodded, saying that she needs the boys to “overlook every thing.”
I requested if she thinks they’re younger sufficient for that to be potential. She advised me she believes they’ve already began to overlook.
“They know the distinction” between their life within the camps and their life within the U.S., Ahmed mentioned. “They usually love us greater than anyone else as a result of they know that we maintain them,” he added. “We wish to erase something unhealthy of their recollections. Could God assist us to realize that.”
“Life is gorgeous now”
In January 2021, Abdelhamid — after a number of months in custody again in the US — admitted to being a “soldier of ISIS” and pleaded responsible to offering materials assist to a chosen overseas 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 mentioned he regretted having joined a “dying cult” and advised his dad and mom that his two sons are “the one good factor 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 usually from behind bars.
In an interview with NPR, Abdelhamid known as himself “a traitor to my nation” and mentioned he’s cooperating with U.S. authorities in different ISIS prosecutions – a declare verified by court docket information – 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 entire household beneath one roof.
“I at all times inform myself I overlook no matter he is executed to us, so far as put us on this scenario and this turmoil,” Ahmed mentioned. “I will at all times forgive him. He is my son.”
Having their grandchildren with them, Ahmed and his spouse advised me, has been extra rejuvenating than tiring, regardless of the challenges of elevating babies throughout center age whereas each holding down different jobs.
“We really feel youthful. We really feel extra energized than earlier than,” Ahmed mentioned. “We acquired our child again and we acquired our grandkids again. I imply, life is gorgeous now.”
They are saying they’re grateful for the US authorities’s efforts to reunite their household. “I do know America work[ed] exhausting to carry my grandkids” to the U.S., his spouse added. “Thanks a lot. I respect America for that.”
And their household may develop even bigger: Abdelhamid says he additionally had a second spouse, a daughter, and a stepdaughter whereas abroad. As was the case together with his first spouse, his second spouse was the widow of an ISIS fighter, she had a toddler from her earlier relationship, after which she and Abdelhamid bore a toddler collectively. Galbraith can also be trying to find these two women, however he advised NPR it’s unclear the place they’re or whether or not they’re alive.
“A severe humanitarian and a possible future safety downside”
In fall 2024, officers from throughout the Center East, Europe and Asia convened at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., to confront a world problem: lowering the inhabitants of Syria’s al-Hol and Roj camps and addressing the dangers they pose, significantly to younger individuals.
Ladies and youngsters stroll at Camp Roj, the place relations of individuals suspected of belonging to the Islamic State group are held, in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province in October 2023.
Delil Souleiman/AFP through Getty Photographs
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Delil Souleiman/AFP through Getty Photographs
“Greater than 25,000 of the displaced individuals are kids rising up in dire situations with out entry to training, alternative or social assist,” Richard Verma, a deputy secretary on the State Division till January 2025, advised the gathered crowd.
Of the roughly 35,500 individuals 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 ladies and youngsters, in accordance with the U.S. State Division. Roughly two-thirds are beneath age 18 and roughly half are beneath age 12.
As well as, roughly 8,600 former ISIS fighters are in jail amenities throughout northeast Syria. Since 2021, about 19,000 individuals have been returned to their dwelling nations 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 a minimum of a dozen American adults who have been prosecuted upon return, some now in jail.
Getting children out is particularly essential, Verma mentioned.
“So long as these kids stay within the camps,” he warned, “the worldwide group faces a severe humanitarian and a possible future safety downside.”
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 kids round them. “The older the kids get, the extra possible that they’ll purchase into the ideology there,” mentioned Galbraith. “That is why it’s so pressing to get the kids out at a younger age.”
Peter Galbraith can also be trying to find Abdelhamid’s daughter and stepdaughter.
Lucy Lu for NPR
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Lucy Lu for NPR
Some nations have resisted bringing dwelling 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 poisonous” and led to a “clear backlash,” Finnish ambassador Jussi Tanner mentioned in a 2021 interview with International Coverage. “However then step by step, with the successive repatriations,” he added, “the general public response has change into increasingly muted.”
By the tip of 2023, practically 40 nations 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 carry the Minnesota boys again to the US, views the kids of ISIS fighters as harmless victims of poor selections made by their dad and mom. “Do not punish the kids for the sins of their fathers,” he mentioned. And he cautions that if the camps aren’t dismantled, they may change into coaching grounds for future terrorists, with worldwide penalties.
“You possibly can fake as if it’s a downside some place else, however you do not know what the longer term holds,” Moss mentioned. “That downside may be at the doorstep when you do not do something about it.”
U.S. officers say that prospect has change into much more worrisome because the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, which has raised fears of a potential ISIS comeback. And whereas the Trump administration’s cuts to overseas support earlier this 12 months briefly halted U.S. funding that helps assist the camps, that funding was later restored.
“This Administration has been clear that because the dynamics within the area change, we can not permit the safety and humanitarian challenges posed by the displaced individuals camps and detention amenities in northeast Syria to fester,” the State Division wrote in a press release to NPR. “Repatriation is the one sturdy resolution to those challenges.”
Ian Moss sees the kids of ISIS fighters as harmless victims of poor selections made by their dad and mom.
Caroline Gutman for NPR
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Caroline Gutman for NPR
Moss factors to the Minnesota household — Ahmed, his spouse and their grandchildren — as successful story thus far.
“These two boys at the moment are dwelling with their grandparents and constructing lives and doing effectively,” he mentioned, “and that we have been capable of maintain a household collectively meant the US was capable of lead by instance.”
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 aside” from the 2 frightened kids he met in Syria.
“They have been completely happy, they have been well-adjusted, they have been relaxed. They have been simply wholesome, regular boys, and it was great,” Galbraith mentioned. “Simply fully great.”
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 photograph modifying by Emily Bogle; translation by Linah Mohammad and Fatma Tanis and audio engineering by Robert Rodriguez.
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