Finding Yusuf
The search for an Australian schoolboy stuck in Syria
Australian Yusuf Zahab was taken as a 12 year old into Syria and, following the fall of IS, was imprisoned without charges. Rumoured to be dead, SBS investigates the current whereabouts of Zahab.
"Yusuf is a child for God's sake. He was a child when it was taken over. He had no agency and he's been left to rot and disappear" says Kamalle Daboussy, who has been pushing for information about Yusuf in addition to the 34 Australian women and children who are still in detention in Northeast Syria. Yusuf attests to the brutal conditions in which prisoners are kept: "I got beaten up so much. I’m scared I’m going to die here, so many people died in prison." Although questions still remain around Yusuf's family's complicity in moving to caliphate-controlled Syria, experts are pushing Australia to take responsibility. "The basic rule of international law is each country is responsible for its own" says Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Former UN Special Rapporteur.
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