2 Spanish women who allegedly joined Daesh/ISIS repatriated from Syria

OVIEDO, Spain

The Spanish government has repatriated two Spanish women and their 12 children from Syria, where they allegedly moved to join the terror group Daesh/ISIS in 2014, according to Spanish daily El Pais.

Government sources told Spanish media that the families landed in the Torrejon de Ardoz military airbase outside of Madrid late Monday night.

According to La Vanguardia newspaper, the two women – Yolanda Martinez and Luna Fernandez – were detained upon arrival and could face charges of collaborating with a terrorist organization.

The women, however, argued that their husbands tricked them into going to Syria and said that they did not fight or participate in terrorist activities.

The two families had been staying in the Roj refugee camp in northeast Syria.

Spain has agreed to repatriate a total of four women and 16 children from Syria with links to Daesh/ISIS. But, according to El Pais, the Spanish government has been unable to locate the other two families.

Three of the women had been requesting repatriation since 2019. However, as most EU countries started to enact policies to repatriate women who had joined Daesh/ISIS and their children, the Spanish government eventually decided to join the trend late last year.

Police sources told La Vanguardia that the two women now in Spain are registered as "dangerous" in the files of the Spanish state.

In 2018, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation estimated that around 1,000 women from Europe joined Daesh/ISIS.

In July, the Spanish think tank Real El Cano estimated that 154 European women were still in Syrian refugee camps after 58 had been repatriated by other European nations.