Researchers accuse Public Prosecutor of misinterpreting ISIS report

Authors of a report titled Destination Syria are accusing the Public Prosecutor of misinterpreting the report. The Prosecutor is using the report to show that every woman takes an active part in the caliphate, but according to the professors, that's not what they wrote, NRC reports.

The Public Prosecutor interprets our research very extremely", Edwin Bakker, professor of terrorism at Leiden University and one of the authors of the report, said to the newspaper. This follows the news that Laura H., a 20-year-old Dutch mother who recently returned to the Netherlands after a year in ISIS hands, was remanded to another 90 days in custody in a terrorism department.

The young mother claims she escaped from the terrorist organization after her husband took her and their two young children there under false pretenses. She says she did not participate in the caliphate and is only concerned about her children. The Dutch judiciary is currently considering whether or not to prosecute her. Motivation for prosecution comes from the Report Destination Syria.

According to the Prosecutor, it states that all female foreign rebel fighters in the Syrian Civil War are directly or indirectly involved in the armed struggle, according to NRC. But according to the researchers, that is not the conclusion that should be drawn from their report.

"To my knowledge we did not write that all women are involved in the armed struggle", Ruud Peters, professor of Islam at the university of Amsterdam and co-author of the report, said to the newspaper. "There are women who just sit in a house, married and looking after the kids.

Bakker agrees with this. "Many girls have the naive idea that in the caliphate they have the best life Muslims can live." A spokesperson for the Public Prosecutor responded by telling NRC that the Prosecution's position on female foreign rebel fighters in the Syrian Civil war is not solely based on the Destination Syria report.

The Prosecutor also uses confidential police reports and a publication by intelligence service AIVD, presumably this one. "From this can be deduced that women, when they stay in the battle field, are not exempt from serving the interests of ISIS", the spokesperson said.