Chechen senator laments over Azerbaijan's indifference to its children in Iraq

Ziyad Sabsabi, the Chechen Senator at the Russia's Federation Council, who is in charge of returning Russian citizens from the Middle East, reports that the Iraqi central women's prison keeps 36 women and more than 65 children from Russia, as well as about 15 children from Azerbaijan, whose fate is of no concern of this country's authorities.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that public organizations worry about some slip in the return of women and children from the Middle East as compared with the last year.

According to Mr Sabsabi, the Russian women in Iraq, whose husbands had joined the "Islamic State" (IS), a terrorist organization banned in Russia, and killed, had arrived there from different regions of Russia: Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Volgograd.

Ziyad Sabbsabi has expressed his regret that the embassies of the CIS countries, whose citizens occurred in the Middle East, are not interested in their fates; and only Russia "is trying to help them."

In January, Siyavush Geidarov, the deputy head of the State Committee for Working with Religious Organizations of Azerbaijan, said that there were more than 300 Azerbaijani children and women in Syria and Iraq "who had fallen under the influence of radical groupings."

Akhmad Makhdjub, the spokesman of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), has added that the Iraqi authorities had handed 27 children and four women accused of links with the IS over to Russia.