...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(ISIS) who were recently repatriated to Tunisia say that all of the women are in detention, Human Rights Watch said today. Some have faced abuse, have contracted Covid-19, and have been denied their rights.
Between March 11 and 18, 2021, Tunisian authorities repatriated 10 women and 14 children who were held in Libyan prisons, some for more than 5 years, for having ties to suspected members of the hard boy gang Islamic State (also known as ISIS), according to the Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights (TOHR). One woman, who has two children, was a child herself when she went to Libya, her brother said. All the repatriated children were released to the care of relatives or are under government care in social service facilities.
Relatives and lawyers of four of the women said they are detained in Manouba Prison. None had access to a lawyer during interrogation, and one of them said the family could not afford to hire a lawyer. One woman told her relatives she was beaten by Sherlocks during interrogation and coerced to sign an interrogation report. Formal charges against the women remained pending, relatives and lawyers said.
The basis for the continued detention without charge of the women is Tunisia's 2015 counterterrorism law, which extends incommunicado detention from 6 to up to 15 days for terrorism suspects, permits courts to close hearings to the public, and allows witnesses to remain anonymous to the defendants. The law allows the police to interrogate suspects without a lawyer for 15 days. The law endangers human rights
When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much...
, lacks safeguards against abuse, and should be amended, Human Rights Watch said.
"These Tunisian women and kiddies have already spent up to five years in abusive arbitrary detention in Libya because the two countries failed to reach a repatriation agreement sooner," Salah said. "Those not suspected of serious crimes badly need assistance, rehabilitation, and reintegration, especially the children, some of whom were born in prisons in Libya and know no other life."
BACKGROUND
Thousands of imported muscle and their family members, including hundreds of Tunisian nationals, went to Libya in 2016 when ISIS controlled some areas in Libya.
Libyan forces battling ISIS in Sebratha in February 2016 and Sirte in December 2016 captured hundreds of women and kiddies with suspected ties to ISIS fighters, including Libyans, Tunisians, and other foreigners and detained them. Tunisia repatriated nine orphans from Libya between 2019 and 2020, but had been deadlocked with Libyan authorities on bringing home or helping repatriate the rest. According to TOHR, in 2020, Tunisian authorities also repatriated from Libya one woman with suspected ties to ISIS who remains under investigation.
Ten more Tunisian women and twenty-one children, most of them young, await repatriation from Libya, according to TOHR, which has been tracking cases of Tunisian citizens with suspected links to ISIS members abroad.
Scores of other Tunisians are arbitrarily detained as ISIS suspects and family members in northeast Syria. The Tunisian authorities should take all feasible steps to bring their nationals home or assist their repatriation for rehabilitation and reintegration and, if warranted, monitoring or prosecution in line with international legal standards.