INTRODUCTION 11. Currently, thousands of women and children – including hundreds of UK and EU citizens – are detained indefinitely without charge or prospect of release in violent, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions in camps in North East Syria. The women and children currently held in these camps – separate from the prison facilities which house ISIL militants – have, with a small number of exceptions charged in absentia, not themselves been charged with any crimes of terrorism and have been afforded no legal rights and protections. They are associated with the ISIL regime in various ways – as direct participants, erstwhile supporters, wives or children of militants, or simply residents in former ISIL-controlled territories – and for various reasons – extremist sympathy, naiveté, poor judgment, or coercion. 12. This report is the first substantial research project based on interviews with detained women in the camps considering in detail the circumstances and conditions of detention for these women and children. This report establishes that European women and children are arbitrarily detained without legal basis, and are subject to inhuman and degrading treatment and that in some cases their treatment at the hands of the Syrian Democratic Forces (‘SDF’) militia is so serious as to amount to torture. This report establishes that the UK and EU States are directly implicated on the ground in North East Syria, and have a direct and specific power to bring an end to the suffering of these women and children. Yet European States are refusing to accept their responsibilities, relying on bad faith arguments about logistical and security hurdles and legal obstacles to justify not repatriating their nationals (see Annex II of this report for government’s repatriation policies and practices). This inaction and acquiescence raises serious legal question of European State responsibility for the human tragedy taking place in North East Syria. In effect, European States are currently engaged in the same exercise of seeking to put detainees beyond the reach of courts and legal remedies as the United States authorities attempted with the Guantanamo Bay detainees. 13. In effect, European States are currently engaged in the same exercise of seeking to put detainees beyond the reach of courts and legal remedies as the United States authorities attempted with the Guantanamo Bay detainees. That bad faith attempt to avoid scrutiny by the United States has been roundly decried in Europe, but it is being re-enacted for European citizens on Europe’s doorstep in Syria. Counter-terrorism and security experts warn that, just as Guantanamo Bay has become a metonym for the worst excesses of the war on terror and a potent recruiting tool for terrorists in the past two decades, the detention of women and children in the North East Syrian camps risks developing into a long-running human rights disaster, a site of dangerous radicalisation to violence, and a symbol of European hypocrisy which fuels the next generation of ISIL inspired terrorism. 9 RIGHTS & SECURITY INTERNATIONAL