過密と悪臭　「ＩＳ戦闘員」収容施設の内側　シリア

【ハサカＡＦＰ＝時事】鉄製の扉の向こうの監房は、うつろな目をした人であふれかえっていた。やせて骨ばった体にオレンジ色の服を着た虜囚たちが、床に隙間なく横たわっている。（写真はイスラム過激派組織「イスラム国（IS）」のメンバーとして拘束されている容疑者たち。シリア北東部ハサカの収容施設にて）
　ＡＦＰはこのほど異例の機会を得て、シリア北東部ハサカでクルド人勢力がイスラム過激派組織「イスラム国（ＩＳ）」の戦闘員とされる容疑者を拘束している施設の一つを取材した。
　１０月初めにトルコ軍が開始したシリアのクルド人勢力に対する攻撃によって、この地域は混乱状態に陥っている。ＩＳの戦闘員とされる者たちを閉じ込めている鉄の扉がどれくらい頑丈にできているかということに、世界中が神経をとがらせている。
　クルド人勢力はトルコ軍による侵攻の可能性と、それによって収容施設に拘束されている最も狂信的なテロリストたちが脱走する危険性を、これまでも繰り返し警告してきた。そして実際にトルコ軍は１０月９日、シリアに侵攻し、この懸念は現実のものとなった。ある米高官によると、既に１００人以上が収容施設から脱走しているという。だが、ハサカの収容所長は、ここからは誰も脱走していないと断言した。
　ＩＳは２０１４年、イラクとシリアにまたがる支配地域で「カリフ制国家」の樹立を宣言。以降この地域で残虐行為を繰り広げてきた。集団処刑、レイプ、奴隷化、拷問などが行われ、ＩＳはプロパガンダに使うためにそれらの多くを撮影していた。
　■最高指導者の死も知らず
　ＡＦＰが訪れた施設には、５年前のＩＳの呼び掛けに応じたジハーディスト（聖戦主義者）らが漂着してきており、シリア、イラクだけではなく英国、フランス、ドイツなどの出身者５０００人が収容されていた。彼らは数か月以上も日の光を見ていない。
　収容施設には１０代の若者も拘束されている。一つの監房は、ＩＳに加わり戦闘員として訓練を受けていた子どもたちに割り当てられていた。ＩＳはプロパガンダでこの子どもたちを「カリフの卵」と呼んでいた。
　収容施設の部屋には、灰色のウレタン・マットレスが冷たい床を覆うように敷かれている。部屋の片隅には、目隠しが半分しかない簡素な落下式便所があった。悪臭は近くにある病棟にまで漂っていた。
　被収容者たちは外の世界で何が起こっているのか、ほとんど知らない。１０月２７日にはドナルド・トランプ米大統領が、ＩＳの最高指導者アブバクル・バグダディ容疑者が死亡したと発表したが、誰もこのニュースを聞いた者はいない。
　彼らの多くは骨と皮ばかりにやせ細っている。運が良ければベッドで横になれるが、その他大勢は体を切断した箇所や包帯で巻かれた傷をさらしたまま、床に直接寝ている。３分の１近くは負傷や、肝炎やエイズ（ＡＩＤＳ）などの疾病で治療が必要だという。
　■外国出身の戦闘員
　クルド人勢力が運営する収容所には現在、１万２０００人以上のＩＳ戦闘員とされる容疑者が拘束されている。
　ハサカのようなあまり堅固ではない収容施設にぎっしり詰め込まれている男たちの出身国はさまざまだ。５０か国以上に上るという彼らの出身国は、ＩＳ戦闘員を野放しにもさせたくないし、自国にも戻らせたくない。
　英ウェールズ出身のアシール・マタン容疑者（２２）は、ＡＦＰに「英国に帰りたい」と話した。マタン容疑者は２０１４年、バグダディ容疑者の呼び掛けに応じＩＳに加わったが、そうすべきではなかったと後悔している。
　バグダディ容疑者が米軍特殊部隊によるシリア北西部での急襲作戦で死亡したのは、マタン容疑者がＡＦＰの取材を受けた数時間後だった。
　オランダ系エジプト人のバッセム・アブデル・アジム容疑者（４２）は空爆により負傷し、右足を動かせない。５人の子どもがいるというアジム容疑者は「一つだけ願い事がある。妻にもう一度会って、戦争中の国に妻と子どもたちを連れてきてしまったことを謝りたい」「その後なら、絞首刑になってもいい」と語った。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2019/11/05-08:31）

Behind the steel door, the cell is as packed as their eyes are empty -- haggard, scrawny prisoners in orange jumpsuits lying head-to-tail cover every inch of floor space.
An AFP team was given rare access to one of the crowded detention facilities in northeastern Syria where Kurdish forces are holding Islamic State group (IS) suspects.
As a Turkish offensive launched against Kurdish forces earlier this month wreaks chaos in the area, just how solid such doors will be is a question keeping the world on edge.
The men crammed into poorly fortified jails such as this one in Hasakeh hail from dozens of countries that don't want them free -- but don't want them back either.
With 5,000 inmates -- Syrian, Iraqi, but also British, French, German -- the prison is bursting with the flotsam of the international jihadist army IS raised five years ago.
Some of them are teenagers and none of them have been under the sun even once in months or more.
They have virtually no knowledge of what is happening outside, their days measured only by the absent-minded thumbing of beads and the five daily Muslim prayers.
Their grey foam mattresses overlap to carpet the cold floor, with only one corner of the cell taken by a basic, half walled-off pit latrine.
The stench is overwhelming in the nearby medical ward, where visitors are given surgical masks at the door.
- Stench -
Many of the prisoners there are all skin and bones. The most fortunate have a bed to lie on, but most of them just sit directly on the floor, exposing amputation stumps and bandaged wounds.
The prison clinic is as crowded as the other cells. A greying man with axillary crutches painstakingly picks his way through the ghostly crowd.
The condition of the wounded speaks of the intensity of the fighting that led to IS's final territorial defeat at the hands of the Kurdish-led fighters of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in March.
It also reveals the dire conditions experienced by the final denizens of the jihadist caliphate when it made its last stand in Baghouz district, 200 kilometres (125 miles) to the south.
Most of the men who have been crammed into this Hasakeh province detention centre and at least six others across Kurdish-held territory are those who were seen limping to surrender just months ago, starved and mutilated.
I want to leave the prison and go back home to my family, says Aseel Mathan, 22.
The lank young man left his native Wales when he was still 17, to join his brother in Mosul, the northern Iraqi city where the IS caliphate was born.
When his brother was killed, he moved across the Syrian border to Raqa, the other main hub of the now-defunct jihadist proto-state.
- 'No contact' -
I want to go back to Britain, Mathan said, adding he wished he hadn't answered the call to arms issued in 2014 by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS leader who was killed in a US raid hours after the young Welshman spoke to AFP.
According to the Kurdish authorities, more than 50 nationalities are represented in the Kurdish-run prisons where more than 12,000 IS suspects are now held.
They have absolutely no contact with the outside world, says the prison governor, who gave his name as Serhat and asked that the exact location of the facility be withheld.
Not all IS fighters were caught by Kurdish and US-led coalition forces in the dying days of the caliphate and the jihadist group has continued to attack its enemies through clandestine cells roaming the region.
Some days, Sarhat says, fugitive jihadists come near the prison and open fire, just as a way of telling the detainees that they are still there.
From France to Tunisia, many of the IS prisoners' countries of origins have been reluctant to repatriate them, fearing a public backlash at home.
With support from their main US ally more unpredictable than ever, and under constant pressure from their archfoe Turkey, the Syrian Kurds' autonomous administration can barely protect itself, let alone foreign detainees.
- 'Dangerous' -
Kurdish forces have repeatedly warned that a Turkish invasion -- which became a reality on October 9 -- could result in mass prison breaks that would release some of the world's most fanatic terrorists into the region, and beyond.
According to a senior US official, more than 100 already broke out.
None from this prison, Sarhat says, although some inmates started a riot during a meal distribution a month ago, attacking guards after one prisoner drew them in by faking a health issue.
Guiding AFP journalists through the corridors of the prison, one guard is hesitant to even lift the hatch in the cell door.
These ones are dangerous, he says.
Further down, one cell is reserved for what IS propaganda used to call the cubs of the caliphate, children who were enlisted and trained as fighters
The adult staying in the same cell is an orthopaedic surgeon who stayed in the caliphate until it shrank to its death just over six months ago.
- 'Cubs of the caliphate' -
One nine-year-old boy from central Asia named Khaled pops his head out of the hatch to see who the visitor might be, smiling to the guard who asks him to calm down his boisterous cellmates.
Some children have been repatriated but the fate of the men remains unclear.
Close to a third of the prison's population is sick and needs treatment for a variety of wounds and conditions that include hepatitis and AIDS.
Only around 300 of them can spend the night in the medical ward, among them Aballah Nooman, a 24-year-old Belgian who lifts his T-shirt to show an open wound.
My organs are spilling out, he says, explaining that he sustained the wound from a fellow jihadist who accidentally shot him while cleaning his weapon.
Bassem Abdel Azim, a 42-year-old Dutch-Egyptian, was wounded in an air strike and can't use his right leg.
He recounts how he tricked his wife into travelling to the caliphate with the promise of a holiday in Turkey.
I didn't tell her, I didn't want her to be scared, Abdel Azim says, explaining he has no idea where she and their five children are now.
I would like to see her again. They can hang me after that, I just want to tell her I'm sorry I took them in a country at war.