Yesterday I mentioned the case of a young woman who left Britain to join DAESH and now wants back. USA Today reports on the case of another young woman who left the United States for DAESH and now wants to be come back into the U. S.:
An American woman who traveled to the battlefields of Syria and married and had a child with an Islamic State fighter wants to come home and face the U.S. justice system, her family’s Florida-based lawyer told USA TODAY.
Hoda Muthana left Alabama to join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, four years ago at age 19. In Syria, she called for Americans to be attacked, and she spread the group’s propaganda online.
She is one of about 1,500 foreign women and children – the spouses and children of Islamic State militants – held in a Kurdish-run detention camp in northern Syria.
Muthana is there with her 18-month-old son. The child’s father is not alive. Two of her previous husbands, both Islamic State militants, are also dead. Muthana is not allowed to leave the camp and has armed guards protecting her from Islamic State sympathizers.
“The government needs to engage with her, but not just her; all of these people who joined ISIS” from the West, said Hassan Shibly, a legal representative for the Muthana family. “If she broke the law, then the justice system can deal with her, and if she didn’t break the law, she should come back anyway, so it can be determined if she is a threat.”
I’d need to know more details before I can express a confident opinion about this particular woman. It should be kept in mind that she didn’t merely leave the United States like a tourist going to Paris. She abandoned everything that we notionally believe and stand for to become what amounts to a DAESH camp follower and, apparently, was an active participant in their propaganda campaign.
Based on the information at hand she is an American citizen by birth so she should be allowed into the country, held for trial, and tried for treason simply based on what she herself has acknowledged. What should happen to her child is a puzzlement. Obviously, she should lose custody permanently. There may even be a question as to the child’s citizenship. I question whether the child’s grandparents should receive custody of the child, especially in the absence of proof of the father’s death.
My views about irregulars, not limited to DAESH, are pretty harsh. Basically, I think their status should be determined immediately in accordance with the requirements of the Geneva Convention and, if it is determined that they are irregulars, they should be executed then and there.
She was quoted as wishing her punishment as “therapy”, feeling that “prison is too harsh”. She is not winning any fans with that.
The government’s position revealed today is she isn’t an American citizen because her father was a diplomat when she was born; the courts shall sort out when her father ceased being a diplomat.
In a way Ms Muthana going to have to work to “gain” the American citizenship she didn’t value very much.
That’s been disputed. Her father claims that he was no longer a diplomat at the time she was born. It’s all very complicated. If her parents have not been naturalized, that could mean that they are unsuitable candidates for custody of her child. IMO they’re unsuitable anyway simply for having reared a daughter who ran off to join DAESH.
If she’s an American she needs to be brought home and prosecuted (assuming there’s evidence for what she’s accused of).
Please don’t put her into an American prison. Those places are like hothouses for radical religions. She’s talking sorry now but if admitted, her confidence will return.
In fact, if we bring her here, I’d be happier if we just set her free.