Terror charges follow Islamic State woman repatriated to Italy
An Italian woman and her four children have been repatriated to Italy, where she was arrested on terror-related charges for having gone to Syria with her husband to join the Islamic State.
Italy arrested a woman who joined the Islamic State on Tuesday after she and her four children were returned to the country from a displaced person’s camp in Syria, according to the Italian authorities.
The repatriation follows a debate that has steadily fallen from the global radar as to whether individuals who joined the Islamic State and other armed groups should return to their countries of origin. And now, as the four children sit in foster care pending a decision by an Italian juvenile court, there is also the mounting challenge of how to reverse indoctrination among minors.
“Nobody has the right solution in how to do this,” said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “It’s one of the reasons why countries are reluctant [to repatriate]. But there is, generally speaking, a consensus on the moral duty to repatriate the children irrespective of the difficulties that come with that.”
Alice Brignoli, her Moroccan-born husband and their three children traveled from the north of Milan to Islamic State-controlled territory in 2015. Alice later gave birth to a fourth child in Syria.
