Germany and Denmark have brought home 11 women and 37 children from a camp in northeastern Syria where suspected Islamic State group members have been held, the German Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

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Germany repatriated 23 children and their eight mothers from the Roj camp on Wednesday evening, while Denmark brought back 14 children and three women.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that the children bear no responsibility for their situation, and "it is right that we do everything to make possible for them a life in safety and a good environment."

"The mothers will have to answer to criminal justice for their actions," Maas added in a statement.

He thanked Kurdish authorities in Syria, Denmark, and "our American partners, who provided logistical support."

German federal prosecutors said three women – whom they identified only as Solale M., Romiena S., and Verena M. in line with local privacy rules – were arrested on arrival at Frankfurt airport. They were accused of membership in a foreign terror organization, taking the children with them against their fathers' will, and violations of their duties of care and education.

Denmark's National Board of Social Service said the Danish group arrived early Thursday at the Karup airbase in the west of the country. The three women were arrested. They face preliminary charges of promoting terrorism and violating laws on traveling to and staying in a conflict zone.

Preliminary charges are one step short of formal charges. Prosecutor Henriette Rosenborg Larsen said the women likely will face a custody hearing later Thursday.

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Germany's foreign minister warned Tuesday against unilateral steps that could hurt Mideast peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians following the change in administration in the United States.

US President Donald Trump has strongly backed Israel during his four-year term, declaring Jerusalem the Jewish state's capital and fostering peace deals between Israel and Arab countries. The Palestinians were outraged by the normalization deals, calling them a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause.

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"Creating facts unilaterally won't help us in this already difficult situation," Germany's top diplomat, Heiko Maas, told reporters after meeting with his Palestinian counterpart in Berlin. "But no doors should be slammed shut either, in view of developments in the United States."

Maas didn't spell out what unilateral measures he was concerned about. But on Monday, his office criticized Israel's public call for construction tenders in east Jerusalem as a "step that sends the wrong signal at the wrong time."

Maas noted that US president-elect Joe Biden agrees with Germany's position that a negotiated two-state solution should be the basis for peace talks between the parties.

The Palestinian Authority's foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, said he sees in Biden's election "a window of opportunity, and we want to take advantage of that window of opportunity in order really just to open a new page."

Al-Maliki added that "we suffered tremendously, as Palestine, from Trump's policies."

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German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas invited Ashkenazi to Thursday's conference of EU foreign ministers.

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Shortly after his arrival, Ashkenazi met with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, thanking him for his country's stance in designating the entirety of Hezbollah - both the political and military wing - as a terrorist organization.

In addition to updating the president on the recent deal to normalize ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, Ashkenazi also implored Germany's head of state to prevent the United Nations' arms embargo against Iran from running down in October.

Ashkenazi spoke at a ceremony at "Platform 17 in Berlin's Grunewald Station, where there is a memorial marking Nazi Germany's deportation of more than 55,000 Jews. He was joined by Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff, Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz, and representatives of the German Jewish community," according to The Jerusalem Post.

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"I stand here as the foreign minister of the government of Israel and the former IDF chief of staff," Ashkenazi said. "Jews will never again be sent to their death because they are Jewish. Never again."

The foreign minister will visit Wannsee, the villa in a Berlin suburb where the architects of the Nazi "Final solution" met - under the direction of Reinhardt Heydrich - to iron out details for the attempted slaughter of Europe's 11 million Jews.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS. 

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