Virus Keeps Bosnian Families of ISIS Fighters in Syrian Camps

Dolamic expressed frustration at the continuing delay to the repatriation of the remaining Bosnians from the Middle East.

"Why can't they deport around a hundred women and children from Syria?" she asked, suggesting that the problem lies in the fact that they are "labelled as terrorists".

She said she was in touch with Bosnia's State Investigation and Protection Agency and Intelligence-Security Agency, and earlier this month wrote to ask Bosnia's Security Minister Fahrudin Radoncic "whether he is thinking about those people at all, particularly in the current situation", but has so far received no response.

Safet Sinanovic, whose daughters and grandchildren are also in a Syrian camp, has not heard from the authorities either.

"It is as if these people are not our citizens. Nobody takes care of them, nobody says anything. Everything has stopped, and [the authorities] are keeping silent," Sinanovic said.

He said he had no information about the coronavirus situation at the camp, adding that whenever he spoke to his daughters, they would just tell him they were all right.

"Maybe they would not even tell me about it. They said nothing about it, nothing about them being visited, all they said was that they were well," he said.

Vlado Azinovic, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo and an expert on extremism and terrorism, said that the pandemic inevitably delayed the repatriation of Bosnians who are still in the Middle East.

"The only thing we see at the moment is that the arrival of the remaining people from Syria has been postponed indefinitely," he said.

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