Two Dagestani women find their grandsons in Syria

Raisat Omarova and Zukhra Gaziakhmatova, residents of Dagestan, have found the whereabouts of their grandsons, who remained in Syria after the death of their parents. For their active actions to evacuate the children from the territory of the "Islamic State" (IS) (banned in Russia by the court), the grandmothers may face criminal liability.

Raisat Omarova and Zukhra Gaziakhmatova got acquainted with each other after their sons were killed in the Middle East. Their grandsons, boys of four and two years old, are brothers by mother; they are now orphans in Syria. According to the grandmothers, the third husband of their deceased daughter-in-law keeps the boys, demanding a ransom for them, the "Novaya Gazeta" reports.

Zukhra's son Shamil got married in 2013; a son was born into the couple, which after a while left for Egypt.

In August 2014, Shamil got a job of guarding oil rigs; and in November he was killed in a missile attack. His widow Madina, who, under the IS' customs, was under threat of placing into the "widows' house", married her countryman Rashid, a son of Raisat Omarova, and gave birth to her second son. A month later, Rashid also perished.

Madina got married for the third time – her new husband, according to the women, was an Arab. She died in the spring of 2018, when trying to get out through the humanitarian corridor of East Ghouta. The boys, one of whom got an intestinal infection, remained with her third husband.

The grandmothers began active actions aimed to save their grandsons: they studied the maps of the warfare; they knew all the hostilities, and searched for traces of Madina and their grandsons in Syria with the help of their acquaintances.