Lebanon Stops Saudi Sisters, Children from Joining Syria Extremists

Local Editor

Lebanese authorities deported three Saudi sisters and their seven children back to Saudi Arabia to prevent them from heading to Syria to join the conflict in the neighboring country.

The sisters and their children were detained by Lebanese authorities in Beirut and flown back to Saudi Arabia after the husband of one of the women told police they planned to join the war, the Saudi state news agency SPA quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying Friday.

Police said the husband, who was the father of three of the children, had tipped them off Monday that his wife had left and was a Takfiri militant. The children were aged between one and 10 years old, the statement added.

The Saudi public has grown increasingly angry at bloody images broadcast of Syria's violence and the regime had sought to stop its citizens from joining what some of them see as a "holy war" against the Syrian government.

Riyadh backed the Takfiri militants battling in Syria while being mindful of the blowback it previously suffered after radicalized Saudi nationals returned home from foreign conflicts ready to wage war on their own government.

Many of the foreign fighters flocking to Syria to join groups like Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"] are Arabs from the Middle East and Africa, although militants had attracted fighters from across different countries ranging from Norway to Uzbekistan.

A former British spy chief said in December that Syria had become the pre-eminent global incubator for a new generation of militants after Takfiri groups there more than doubled their recruitment of foreign fighters to as many as 31,000 over the past 18 months.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team