Stefan Uterloo is 19 years old and has been locked up in Panorama prison in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria for almost six years. Originally from Suriname and raised in Amsterdam, he was arrested at just 13 years old when Kurdish forces completed the victory over the Islamic State (ISIS), liquidating its caliphate in Syria.
In an interview with ACN and two other Catalan media outlets that have entered the prison, Stefan denies that he and “many other imprisoned children” have committed “jihad.” “Why doesn’t the world have mercy on us? “We were children,” he says from a cell.
He is unaware that Bashar al-Assad’s regime has fallen and that an Islamist group has come to power in Damascus, since cell phones are prohibited in this maximum security prison.
Panorama prison is located in Hasaka, northeastern Syria. With the help of the United States, the Kurdish forces in that territory managed to defeat the Islamic State during the civil war and captured tens of thousands of people allegedly linked to the radical Islamist group.
Almost six years after the defeat of ISIS, more than 56,000 people remain “arbitrarily” detained and suffer torture and “inhumane living conditions,” according to Amnesty International.
One of the first measures that the Levant Liberation Organization (HTS, for its acronym in Arabic) has taken since it overthrew Al Assad on December 8 has been the opening of prisons, but the HTS does not control all the territory. of the country.
De facto, northeastern Syria is under the rule of the Kurds, who have created an autonomous administration. Thus, ISIS inmates remain in prisons managed by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Aanes), also known as Rojava.
According to an Aanes spokesperson, the senior ISIS commanders who managed to reach Baguz, the last bastion of the jihadist rebels who established a caliphate in northeast Syria between 2014 and 2019, are in the Panorama prison.
Aanes does not reveal the exact number of prisoners currently in Panorama, but they indicate that before the 2021 mutiny there were around 4,000 inmates.
Teenage prisoners
During the interview, Stefan speaks from a cell shared with about twenty boys of a similar age. Everyone is freshly showered and the space is clean. It is the cell closest to the exit, the only one where the guards allow access to the press.
Amnesty International denounced in a report in April that prisoners “crowd” into cells without ventilation where “extreme” temperatures reach in summer. “The boys detained as minors appear to live separately from other adult prisoners, but they are also suffering the effects of a widespread outbreak of tuberculosis,” says the human rights organization.
Stefan tells from behind bars that he arrived in Idlib, Syria, with his mother when he was only ten years old. At that time (2015) it was a territory controlled by several rebel groups and the country was immersed in a civil war as a result of the revolution against the Al Assad regime.
According to him, his mother went to work at the Idlib hospital, not to join ISIS. Now, he recognizes that they became Muslims: “We were Christians, but we converted to Islam because of these people from Syria.”
Two years later, ISIS “kidnaps” him and he loses sight of his mother, according to his story. “I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to go to do jihad,” he remarks. Stefan explains that he lived “on the streets” of Baghouz and that he was “wounded,” but he does not specify if he fought with the jihadists during those years.
In 2019 he was arrested in Baghouz and the Kurds locked him in Panorama prison. In 2021 there was a prisoner revolt and since then strong security measures have been imposed, so the prisoners are incommunicado.
Six years locked up
“My life has been ruined,” says Stefan. He is afraid to talk about the conditions in prison, but admits that he “practically” does not eat or do anything all day. “It’s very lonely and desperate,” he says.
According to Amnesty International, people detained at Panorama “do not have access to food or adequate medical care, which causes illness, including a serious outbreak of tuberculosis that has not subsided in years” and has caused deaths in prison.
Stefan shares a cell with other young people who, like him, were arrested when they were minors. “They are innocent, they were deceived,” he denounces. He distances himself from the organization, although he admits that he was tempted to join it. “Before entering here, I had thoughts about ISIS, but now I have seen these people and it is not what I expected,” he concludes.
After the interview, Dahmat, the head of the penitentiary, says about Stefan: “In those days I would have slit your throats.” Two years ago they stopped the “rehabilitation” programs because “they were not giving results,” he explains.
No repatriation prospects
Despite the situation he describes, Stefan maintains the hope of getting out of prison, rebuilding his life and finding his mother. “If only someone could help me…”
The Catalan journalists who have entered the prison have contacted the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which denies having any knowledge of their case. “We have not received any request for consular assistance from the person concerned or his family,” they say, adding: “The possibilities of providing consular assistance to Dutch detainees in Syria are very limited because the Netherlands does not have diplomatic representation in Syria. since 2012.”
Now, in a subsequent message, a spokesperson for the ministry provides a contact telephone number in case Stefan or his relatives want to contact them. Stefan is not allowed to have a cell phone in prison and has not yet been able to speak to a lawyer.
Amnesty complaint
Amnesty International does not know Stefan’s situation either, although they have been demanding for some time “the release and return or repatriation of minors and young people” imprisoned in Syria. In 2023, the human rights organization visited the Panorama prison, guarded by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF).
According to Amnesty, there are around 30,000 children detained in northeastern Syria, the largest concentration of children deprived of liberty anywhere in the world. In Panorama prison alone there are about 600 minors, half Syrians and Iraqis, the rest are foreigners. “None have been charged or tried,” the report highlights.
In turn, Aanes assures that “a significant number” of this group of children were affiliated with ISIS as “members of the cubs of the caliphate” and that, therefore, their “legal protocols require their transfer to reform and rehabilitation centers after of the sentence.”
Aanes justifies the detention of minors due to the “insufficient number of rehabilitation centers” and concern about “their integration with detainees convicted of other crimes.”
Even if the minors were recruited by ISIS, Amnesty argues that they should be treated as “victims” and that detention should only be a “last resort” measure. “If the regional authorities tried them, they would face a maximum sentence of seven years, according to the region’s law, and many have already served almost that time,” the report states.
For this reason, they urge Aanes and the FDS to “start the screening process for these boys and young people detained as minors.”
Regarding young foreigners, Amnesty denounces that some countries are violating international law by denying them repatriation. “Despite the increasing number of countries repatriating women and children from the camps, some governments exclude those who have reached or are about to reach the age of eighteen and children believed to have fought with the Islamic State” .
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