One of the returnees from detention camps in Syria pleads guilty to supporting a terrorist organization.

A woman pleaded guilty in a closed session at Esbjerg court on Thursday to charges of supporting a terrorist organization and illegally residing in Syria. She is one of three women who were repatriated to Denmark with their children from a detention camp in Syria.

The woman is accused of violating Section 114e and Article 114j of the Danish Penal Code. According to the prosecution, she partially supported a terrorist organization, namely ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, and partially remained in conflict zones in Syria without permission from the Danish authorities.

The court was scheduled to decide on Thursday whether the woman should remain in custody in the case and whether she could be imprisoned under more moderate conditions than she was in in a detention center or prison.

According to her lawyer, Mette Grith Stage, she requested that the procedure take place at the mother and child's home, as she stated that this is permissible under the law, but her request was denied. The court hearing concluded with the woman, a mother of five, being remanded in custody for another four weeks, until December 2nd. No appeal was filed with the Supreme Court regarding the remand.

The mother will have the right to see her five children for one hour per week.

In extreme cases, the sentence may reach 8 years imprisonment.
The woman is one of three women from Syrian detention camps who were evacuated with their Danish children and arrived in Denmark on the night of October 7. All three women were arrested and subjected to constitutional questioning in different parts of the country.

While this 34-year-old woman was in court today in Esbjerg, a 37-year-old woman agreed on Monday to voluntarily extend her detention for four weeks, until November 29.
The third woman will appear at a court hearing in Frederiksberg on Thursday afternoon.

It is worth noting that bringing the women and a total of 14 children to Denmark from Syria came after lengthy political discussions, which occupied a significant space in the local media.

The women are accused of traveling to Syria and joining the Islamic State terrorist organization. In extreme cases, they could face up to eight years in prison.

The main question here is whether peeling potatoes and taking care of the homes and children of ISIS fighters constitutes “promoting terrorism”? If you look at Danish legislation, the answer is probably yes.

According to Fredrik Harhoff, under Danish terrorism legislation, a person can be punished for “promoting terrorist activity” without directly committing terrorism. He told TV2, “The fact that women cooked for ISIS fighters, raised their children, and washed their clothes may, in principle, be sufficient to help promote terrorism in the sense intended by criminal law.”.
The punishment is usually higher if women actively participated in acts of war, he added: “But if the women only looked after their husbands when they returned home, in addition to looking after the children, taking care of the family and cooking, then I think an unconditional prison sentence of three to four years would be likely.”.

4 Women and 5 children will not be evacuated to Denmark
Initially, the discussion began about 7 women and 19 children who (as a family) all or some of whom hold Danish citizenship. There are still four women with five children in the detention camps, and they have been deprived of Danish citizenship and therefore will not be evacuated.

This is a brief account of the three women who were evacuated to Denmark with their children.:

woman and two children
The children: a five-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl.
Mother: Of Danish ethnic origin, 31 years old.
The woman traveled to Syria in 2014. According to Repatriate the Children, the woman adopted the boy she found after a bomb attack in 2015. The woman married in Syria and gave birth to a daughter in 2016.

A woman and five children
Children: Five children aged between two and 13 years.
Mother: A 34-year-old Danish woman from Jutland.
The woman and the children's father traveled to Syria with their four children and gave birth to their fifth child in Syria.

A woman and seven children
Children: Seven children aged 14, 12 and 11 years old, and twins aged 9, 4 and 2 years old.
The mother is 37 years old. She is a Danish citizen, but according to the authorities, she is also a citizen of an Eastern European country.
In addition to the seven children, the woman also has a 15-year-old son who was brought to Denmark in 2019 after being shot in the back and paralyzed in his legs. He currently lives in East Jutland.
Of the woman's seven children who were returned to Denmark, the five eldest were born there. The 15-year-old son was also born in Denmark.

Source: TV2