Return of Lisa Smith 'dividing her own family'
- by Lorene Schwartz
- in People
- — Nov 13, 2019
Last week, Erdogan said Turkey had captured 13 people from Baghdadi's close circle, adding that they were being interrogated.
Besides, the process of deportation of 11 French fighters captured in Syria is still underway, he noted.
A Turkish official told AFP that he had refused to be returned to the USA and instead asked to be sent to Greece.
Asked to comment on the reports on Tuesday, Erdoğan said: "Whether [the deported Isis fighters] are stuck there at the border it doesn't concern us".
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has said that Turkey is not "a hotel" for IS militants and that Ankara would begin repatriating IS militants held by Turkey as of Monday.
Germany's interior ministry said "it did not wish to oppose the return of German citizens" and that authorities were still verifying the identities and the reasons for their repatriation.
Ankara says it has captured 287 militants in northeast Syria and already holds hundreds more Islamic State suspects.
"Jihadists and their families are regularly sent back to France and arrested as they leave the airplance".
"This morning, a foreign terrorist fighter from the United States was deported from Turkey after the procedures at the deportation center were completed", Anadolu quoted Catakli as saying.
Turkey has lately increased pressure on Europe to take responsibility for the problem.
2 dead, 7 missing in Australia wildfires
She was treated for burns before being transferred to a Sydney hospital where she later died, the RFS said on Saturday. Towns, including Port Macquarie and Grafton, were bathed in an eerie red as the huge fires threatened homes.
For Ankara, its long-standing extradition request for US -based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom it blames for orchestrating the 2016 failed coup, and USA charges on Turkey's state-owned Halkbank for Iran sanctions-busting are also contentious.
He says many locals have sent letters to the local county council, objecting to any return.
The Department of Foreign Affairs would not confirm the news this afternoon - with one source saying they'll wait to see if Lisa Smith is actually on the plane home before reacting.
In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK - listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the European Union - has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.
Turkey launched the offensive last month to push Kurdish militants back from its border and create room to repatriate Syrian refugees.
Turkey has rejected those concerns and vowed to combat Islamic State with its allies.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday implied that Turkey could release Islamic State prisoners into Europe as retaliation for new sanctions from the European Union over Turkey's unauthorized drilling for gas off the Cyprus coast.
It follows its offensive last month in northern Syria against Kurdish militants who were holding thousands of IS fighters and their families.
A further 90,000 men, women and children with links to Isis are now held in Kurdish-run detention centres in Syria.
