IS-linked Albanian child arrives home to Italy from Syria camp

An Albanian boy taken by his mother to join the Islamic State group in Syria returned to his home in Italy on Friday, in the first such operation coordinated with Damascus. "Little Alvin Berisha has arrived at Fiumicino (Rome) airport where he was reunited with his father and sister," Italian police said in a statement.

The Italian public has been avidly following the story of 11-year-old Alvin, who was born in Italy to Albanian parents since it emerged last month he was living in a Kurdish-held camp in northeastern Syria. The Albanian boy's mother was killed in the fighting, according to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

A media report aired in October showed the emotional reunion between the boy and his father in the Al-Hol camp housing thousands of family members of suspected IS fighters. An IFRC spokesman said on Thursday that an Albanian boy was on his way back from Al-Hol to his father in Italy.

"This started five years ago with the mother kidnapping the child, and deciding to go and fight for IS," Tommaso Della Longa told AFP. "We discovered through a message from Al-Hol camp that the boy was still alive." After years of fighting, Syria's Kurds hold thousands of suspected foreign IS members in detention camps: men and women, but also some 8,000 children -- more than half of whom are under the age of five.

The United Nations says hundreds of them are unaccompanied. With the backing of Italian and Albanian authorities and after negotiations in the Syrian capital, the IFRC was handed over the Albanian child on Wednesday in the first such repatriation via Damascus.

"Our Syrian Red Crescent volunteers escorted the boy from Al-Hol to Damascus," Della Longa said. International powers have warned of mass IS breakouts from Al-Hol, as well as other Kurdish-run camps and jails, in the wake of a deadly Turkish cross-border offensive on October 9.

The Albanian boy's return home is the first such known handover since the start of the attack, which has seen Syria's Kurds cosy up to Damascus after years of seeking semi-autonomy. The Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called for Western countries to repatriate their nationals linked to IS, but they have been largely reluctant.

Austria, Germany, France and Belgium, however, have brought a handful of orphans home, while the United States has repatriated several women and their children. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kosovo have repatriated dozens of women and children. 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)