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AL-ROJ, SYRIA / OSLO (Aftenposten): No one has heard from them in a year and a half. Now the younger of the two Bærum sisters says she wants to take her daughter to Norway.
A tall, slim woman wearing sunglasses and a mask in front of her face walks into the interview room naked in the Al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria. Do you limp a little?
It’s Leila. The youngest of the Bærum sisters who became nationally known through Two sisters, Åsne Seierstads bok.
The two Norwegian-Somali sisters left Norway in the fall of 2013 and later joined IS. Leila and Ayan, as Seierstad called them in the book, were only 16 and 19 years old. His father’s fight to get them back became a series in the Norwegian media. The book about them became an award-winning bestseller.
The two Bærum girls were 16 and 19 when they traveled from Norway to Syria in October 2013. Private
It was a sensation when Aftenposten found them again in the Al-Hol camp in Syria in June last year. Leila and Ayan had survived the bombing of the last ISIS haven, Baghouz. The sisters and their children were among the last to leave there alive in March 2019.
Since then it became very quiet. They wanted nothing more to do with either the press or the Norwegian authorities. The sisters had not given their real names to the Syrian authorities and disappeared in the chaos of the camp.
Aftenposten visited the Al-Hol camp three times in November. We heard rumors that the sisters had done like so many others: they escaped from the camp. Maybe they were with the IS remnants in Idlib, at the other end of the country?
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