Britain’s Involvement in Funding Secret Prisons Run by Kurdish Forces to Detain Children Inside Syria

A British newspaper recently published an investigation accusing the UK of violating international law and committing serious abuses in Syria by funding secret prisons run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which hundreds of children and minors are held without any trial.

On its part, Human Rights Watch confirmed that the British involvement in funding these detention camps in northeastern Syria raises serious legal questions.

According to the human rights organization, Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria have detained more than 41,000 foreigners from dozens of countries since at least 2019 in life-threatening and often inhumane conditions in camps and prisons, most of them are under the age of 12, and none of them have appeared before a court to decide the necessity and legality of their detention.

 

UK-funded Atrocities

The British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, revealed, in an investigation, the terrible situation of the prisons run by the SDF, describing the prisons, which hold about 750 children, some of whom have not seen the sun for three years, as a black hole that swallows those children.

The newspaper noted that these prisons are funded by the British government as part of its tasks in the Global Coalition, adding that these detained children, some of them under the age of nine, did not carry weapons, none of them were charged with a crime or tried, and their only sin is that their father was fighters in the ranks ISIS group.

"The detained children are forced to stay in cells, hot in summer and cold in winter, resulting in serious injuries that cannot be treated in prison, while some children suffer from tuberculosis, which spreads in unventilated rooms," it stated.

"The detained children are subjected to miserable treatment and are not allowed to have education or family visits, and they are deprived of fruits and vegetables, which has affected their health greatly," it added.

On her part, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, confirmed that at least 100 children are missing, suggesting that "either children who were killed during the attack or moved out of the prison to locations where they have not been identified. Under international law, we would call that enforced disappearance."

The SDF had acknowledged the killing of 121 of its fighters and prison guards in the siege of Ghwayran prison in al-Hasakah last January, alongside more than 380 militants and prisoners, but it has never said how many minors were injured or died.

"Most of the imprisoned boys are from Syria and Iraq, but there are approximately 150 foreign children from different countries, including a British child," the newspaper indicated.

Meanwhile, London not only refused the return of its citizens to their countries but also stripped some of them of their citizenship and funding for those prisons.

In 2021, General Paul Calvert, Commander of Coalition to Defeat ISIS, revealed that "the UK provided $20 million to expand prisons, and is working to increase their funding next year."

According to the Guardian newspaper, in February 2021, about 60 people who left the UK to join ISIS in Syria, including 35 minors, are still being held in a camp run by the SDF in northeastern Syria after the British government revoked the citizenship of a number of who are.

"The fact that the UK Government is using taxpayer money to pay for kids to grow up behind barbed wire in overcrowded prisons is horrifying," said Maya Foa, co-executive director of Reprieve, a legal NGO advocating for women and children detained in northeast Syria.

She saw that London is effectively creating a Guantanamo for children in Syria, as she described it.

In a letter they sent to the British government dating back to February 1, UN experts warned against Britain's funding of the SDF prisons in which thousands of people are being held arbitrarily and without any charge, considering this behavior inconsistent with international political and civil rights.

However, last April, the UK government denied the existence of such funding, rejecting a request from The Telegraph to provide information about British support for prisons in northeastern Syria under the Freedom of Information Act.

It justified the refusal as an exception related to the protection of national security, but the government revealed in its letter to the UN experts that it plans to invest more in the prison system in northeastern Syria, adding: "We plan to increase the volume of humanitarian support for minors in prisons in 2022."

No one knows how much the government has spent or the oversight it has overseen on the grounds that it would not be appropriate to suspend on national security grounds.

 

Unknown Fate

On July 18, 2022, Australian media reported that a 17-year-old Australian teenager died in a prison in SDF-controlled areas in northeastern Syria after his family begged his country's government to return him and many pleas for his release.

The SBS channel said that the family of the boy, Yusuf Zahab received the news after Australian officials contacted them.

Last January, Yusuf sent audio messages to his family from prison saying that he feared for his life after learning that he had tuberculosis and after his friends died by his side.

Yusuf was shot and wounded in the head in the events of Ghwayran prison in al-Hasakah during a battle launched by the SDF and the Global Coalition to restore the prison after ISIS cells seized it last January.

On March 22, 2022, an investigation published by the Untold Story website documented 49 detention centers in SDF-controlled areas in northeastern Syria, including 38 secret detainees supervised by various SDF components, 8 officially declared central prisons, and 3 prisons directly belonging to the Global Coalition forces.

In a related context, the German DW network published a report in February 2022, which sheds light on the reality of ISIS children being held in prisons run by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria and their unknown fate for several years.

According to the network, Ghwayran prison in al-Hasakah alone holds 700 minors, and the reason is that their families are affiliated with ISIS. Most of these children are from Syria and Iraq, and about 150 of them are foreigners from outside those two countries.

The report stated that one cell in Ghwayran Prison, shared by about 20 children, is without windows, while the Kurdish authorities say that some of these children were involved in accidents, and others came from extremist families.

It is noteworthy that the New York Times had rare access to a prison holding ISIS prisoners in 2019 and, at that time, found 86 children huddled in one cell and 67 others in another cell, aged between nine and fourteen.

 

Dire Prison Conditions

Following the scandal raised by The Daily Telegraph, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor strongly criticized the continuation of international support for the SDF forces that control areas in northeastern Syria, despite their involvement in serious human rights violations.

The observatory said, in a press statement on August 02, 2022, that SDF continues to receive generous political, military, and financial support from countries such as the US, the UK, and Sweden, without restrictions related to its respect for the rights of the population in the areas it controls, especially the dire prison conditions in which the SDF is holding tens of thousands of people.

"The SDF is detaining about 750 children without trial or due legal procedures, in deplorable humanitarian conditions that seriously threaten their physical and mental health, in addition to depriving them of visits, health care, and daylight," it pointed out.

It called on the countries that support SDF to stop their unconditional support, put pressure on them to immediately release hundreds of children, and improve the humanitarian situation in detention facilities.

"In August 2021, the UK approved plans worth $20 million to support SDF prisons and improve their conditions, without paying attention to the extent of violations being practiced inside prisons, which caused the death of a number of prisoners and the spread of infectious diseases among them, such as tuberculosis, with an almost complete lack of medical care," it indicated.

In turn, lawyer Bassam Tablieh explained in a statement to Al-Estiklal that "the SDF is an outlaw armed militia that has plundered Syrian oil under the tutelage of the US, the UK, and the Global Coalition."

He added: "Under international law, these children cannot be punished and detained without trial, but must be rehabilitated in order to integrate into society. Otherwise, this is considered a denial by the Western countries that these measures are unsuccessful, and this human rights system must be reconsidered."

Mr. Tablieh also called for the UK government to be held accountable for the violations it is creating through its funding and support for separatist militias that control large areas in northeastern Syria.

"Western governments' support for such armed militias for political or economic gains does not justify and does not give those governments the right to fund prisons in which children's rights are violated," he pointed out.

From a human rights perspective, Mr. Tablieh called for shedding light on such violations through the media, adding that "the families of the affected should also file cases before national and international courts to impose more pressure on Western governments to modify their interests and their ambivalence in dealing with humanitarian issues."