ISIL-linked detainees report night raids, extortion, violence at Roj camp
Over 2,300 women and children are still held in what UN experts and human rights groups describe as open-ended detention
When the shooting starts, Sara tells her children to lie flat on the ground; the bullets, she said, can go straight through her family’s tent.
Sara, who asked that her real name not be used, has been arbitrarily detained for nearly a decade in Roj camp in Syria’s far northeast, which holds more than 2,300 children and mothers, many of whom are held on the basis of alleged family or other associations with ISIL.
Her children have grown up behind guarded fences topped with barbed wire and tangled with rubbish that often blocks the view of the barren, windswept landscape beyond.
Upwards of 70,000 people were once detained in al-Hol, another larger camp in the northeast holding the families of alleged ISIL fighters. In 2023, more than 52,000 people – mostly Syrians and Iraqis – were held in al-Hol and Roj, including an estimated 12,000 foreign nationals.