Even though Muslims born in Europe have been condemned for joining the ranks of ISIS in Syria and Iraq with action against them being threatened in most European countries should they return, the same condemnation has not been made for Dutch biker gang members who have joined Kurdish rebels in Mosul to fight ISIS.
On Tuesday, the Dutch public prosecutor spokesman Wim de Bruin said that in the case of the bikers, they were not officially guilty of any specific crime, according to an AFP report.
Wim said to reporters that, “Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it’s no longer forbidden[.] You just can’t join a fight against the Netherlands,” he clarified.
According to the head of the “No Surrender” biker gang, Klaas Otto, who also spoke to AFP , three members of the gang who travelled to Mosul are in fact helping in the war against ISIS and they are all Dutch nationals, from Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Breda.
The revelations that Dutchmen are fighting in Iraq , but not for ISIS, came after a photo surfaced on a Dutch-Kurdish Twitter account showing a tattooed man called Ron in military garb, holding a Kalashnikov assault rifle while sitting with a Kurdish comrade.
Many European countries have been clamping down on the ISIS threat in any ways they can, including measures to confiscate would-be jihadists’ passports before they have the chance to travel and threatening prosecution should they return.
De Bruin added, “The big difference with ISIS is that it’s listed as a terrorist group. That means that even preparing to join ISIS is punishable.”
He also added that while technically fighting for the Kurds against ISIS was acceptable by Dutch law, the citizens could not join the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as it is a Kurdish group blacklisted by Turkey as a terror organization over its fight for independence from the country.
As such, Dutch citizens fighting on the Kurdish side would of course be liable to prosecution if they committed crimes such as torture or rape.
