It is about the children of Finnish militants who were planned to be delivered to their homeland by a flight for diplomats.
The Foreign Minister of Finland, Pekka Haavisto, tried to arbitrarily remove the children of Finnish militants of the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, banned in the Russian Federation) from the Syrian El Khol camp to Finland. Such data was published on Monday by the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper.
To do this, according to the publication, he tried to put pressure on one of the Finnish Foreign Ministry officials, the head of the consular department, Pasi Tuominen, to take the children out of Syria on a diplomatic flight and announced that it was his own decision. It was assumed that children would be taken out of the country this fall without mothers.
Tuominen refused to comply with the minister’s request, citing a reluctance to violate international law, after which, the newspaper claims, was removed from his post. The second reason for his dismissal, according to Ilta-Sanomat, allegedly was the change in September requirements for Finnish Schengen to be strengthened by the Russians. Haavisto himself denied all these data.
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the country’s parliament has already demanded explanations about the publication’s information. “If this really happened, then Haavisto did not inform our committee and parliament about it,” said committee head Mika Niikko. According to him, already “the plan in itself to bring children on a consular flight violates laws and international agreements”. He added that, according to consular law, it is impossible to separate children from their mothers, that is, the wives of the militants would also have to come to Finland in this case, which “would become a security threat to the country”.
“The Committee on Foreign Affairs wants to hear clear explanations from the minister on this issue, we invited him to do it tomorrow [on Tuesday]”, – Niikko pointed out.