Trinidad and Tobago: Bring Home Nationals from Northeast Syria

(Port of Spain, Trinidad, February 28, 2023) – Over 90 nationals of Trinidad and Tobago, including at least 56 children, are unlawfully detained in life-threatening conditions as Islamic State (ISIS) suspects and family members in northeast Syria, Human Rights Watch said today. The government of Trinidad and Tobago has taken almost no action to help them return, even as countries including the United States and Barbados repatriate their own nationals.
 
Conditions in the camps and prisons holding Trinidadians and other ISIS-linked suspects and family members are increasingly dire. Turkish airstrikes in November 2022 hit a security post at one camp, killing eight guards, and came perilously close to striking one of the prisons. Health care, clean water, shelter, and education and recreation for children are grossly inadequate. Mothers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they hide their children in their tents to protect them from sexual predators, abusive camp guards, and ISIS recruiters and fighters. Children have drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires, and been hit and killed by water trucks, and hundreds have died from treatable illnesses.