Woman "deeply affected" by accusation she recruited own son to be ISIS child soldier

A Dutch woman suspected of traveling to Syria to join a terrorist organization is “deeply affected” by the “bitter” accusation that she deployed her underage son in the ISIS armed struggle. Ayada K. said this on Thursday during the first preparatory hearing in the case against her in the secure court in Rotterdam.

K. left for Syria with her two children in 2014. Her son was 13 at the time, her daughter 14. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) suspects her of being an accomplice in the recruitment of her son. The boy is said to have died in 2017 in fighting near the city of Raqqa, then the capital of the caliphate proclaimed by ISIS in northern Syria.

The United States assisted in returning the 47-year-old woman and her daughter to the Netherlands last May. She was present in court but mainly invoked her right to remain silent.

However, she could not hold back her tears when the judge asked how she was doing. Her lawyer said that the accusations had affected her deeply.

"Her daughter previously stated that she was upset when she was separated from her son in Syria and when she heard that her daughter's husband had sent him to a training camp,” the attorney said.

According to various media outlets, the daughter married convicted jihadist Reda N. The Leiden man was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison in 2021. The daughter is not currently in custody, but there is still a criminal case against her. It is not yet known when a trial will take place.

K. will remain in pre-trial detention for at least the next three months, the court ruled. The next hearing will be held on October 23, and the procedural session will focus on the status of the case and will not be the start of the trial.

Roughly 300 Dutch citizens, including a hundred women, have traveled to Syria and Iraq since 2012 to join jihadist groups, mainly the Islamic State, according to intelligence service AIVD. The majority have returned to the Netherlands. The service estimates that around a hundred of those Dutch people are currently still in Syria, Iraq, or Turkey.