MAASTRICHT, Netherlands: A blonde, blue-eyed Dutch 19-year-old who was rescued by her mother after marrying an Islamic State fighter in Syria, was ordered yesterday to be detained pending possible terror charges.
A convert to Islam who travelled to Syria in February to marry an IS fighter she saw as a Robin Hood figure, Aicha was arrested after landing back in the Netherlands with her mother Monique on Wednesday.
The court in her southern hometown of Maastricht yesterday ordered her continued detention on suspicion of “crimes threatening state security”.
“Today the examining judge has reviewed the custody order of Aicha and concluded that it was lawful,” court spokesman Marc Bax told journalists after the hearing. Another hearing on Tuesday will decide if the young woman, known as Sterlina before she adopted an Arab name, should be held for another 14 days and possibly charged.
Public prosecutor Martina Bijker said that if Aicha were found to have fought alongside IS she could face up to 30 years in prison. “Aicha is accused of joining a criminal organisation in Syria with the intent of joining criminals with terrorist activities,” Bijker said. “We are still not sure what happened and what the charge will ultimately be or if there will be a charge,” said Bijker.
As is routine in the preliminary stage of Dutch prosecutions, Aicha’s family name was not made public.
European nations are increasingly concerned about returning jihadist fighters, but the question of what to do with women who travel to Iraq and Syria but do not fight is a thorny one.
Monique, 49, has previously spoken at length to Dutch media about her daughter, who “liked going out, playing the piano and listening to music”.
She told Dutch television that her daughter first came home with the Bible, and then with the Holy Quran. She converted to Islam and began wearing a face-covering niqab.
The turning point came when Aicha saw an interview on Dutch television with a Dutch-Turkish jihadist fighter, Omar Yilmaz.
Yilmaz, a former soldier in the Dutch army who also did national service in Turkey, is one of a group of Dutch jihadists who have travelled to Syria where he is training fighters for the IS group.
“Look at that man, it’s so good what he’s doing,” Aicha allegedly told her mother, who said she saw him as a Robin Hood figure.
Dutch authorities confiscated Aicha’s passport to prevent her travelling to Syria following warnings from a friend. But she managed to travel with a simple identity card — which is obligatory in the Netherlands.
Aicha turned to her mother for help after her marriage to Yilmaz failed and she ended up with a Tunisian fighter, the Dutch tabloid daily Algemeen Dagblad said.
AFP
