Man Fights For Custody Of Seven Grandchildren After ISIS-Recruited Daughter Dies In Syria

A Swedish-Chilean grandfather has looked back on his fight to rescue seven of his grandchildren out of Syria following their terrorist father’s shooting death.

Patricio Galvez, 53, said that he wasted no time and flew from Sweden to Syria after learning that her daughter Amanda Gonzalez, who married Scandinavia’s most hated terrorist Michael Skramo, died in Syria in 2019.

Gonzalez, who was pregnant with their eighth child at that time, was killed in January 2019 when a piece of shrapnel pierced her back following an airstrike conducted by US-backed rebel forces near Baghuz, New York Post reported. She was married to Skramo, a known ISIS figure, who had raised money and recruited members for the group.

The man also reportedly urged his social-media followers on social media to murder non-Muslims in Sweden. He had his own YouTube channel and changed his name to Abo Ibrahim Al-Swedi as he became further radicalized before he died.

“I needed to find the children,” Galvez said. "My mission was to go to Syria and to get [her] kids. It was very clear.”

Gonzalez, who lived with her mother following her parents' split, had converted to Islam at 18 years old. She would meet Skramo through an Islamic-themed blog she wrote from Gothenburg. The woman, 21 at that time, would give birth to their eldest son, Ibrahim, in Sweden. Three years later, Amanda, 24, a mother of four by then, followed Skramo to Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State caliphate in Syria.

Skramo would also later die after he was paralyzed by a bullet. He left the seven surviving children in the care of his second wife, who sent to them northeast Syria's teeming Kurdish-run Al-Hol refugee camp, which housed more than 60,000 people. The site placed the kids in danger of dying from malnutrition.

Their grandfather also insists that they may be further indoctrinated into the Islamic State by ISIS widows, who he claims are brainwashing the “cubs of the caliphate."

A September report from Save the Children noted that violence, murders, and assaults are mere common daily scenarios at the squalid site with only 40 percent of the ISIS orphans at Al-Hol receiving an education. Many kids have also recently expressed fear for their safety when they go out to the market or even use the latrines and bathing facilities.

Galvez’s story is the focus of a new documentary, “Children of the Enemy," which was directed by Gorki Glaser-Müller, according to Variety.

Galvez invited Glaser-Müller to accompany him and chronicle his perilous mission to travel to the capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan. From Erbil, the grandfather hoped to enter Syria and save his grandchildren. He would fly with them back to Sweden after friends pooled in money to buy them plane tickets.

However, Swedish social services decided that the man cannot take seven more kids with him as he lives in a small apartment and has two more children of his own.

To date, the children are now living under different names in foster care homes, just an hour away from Gothenburg.

Following the ordeal, Galvez founded the nonprofit Repatriate the Children, which aims to help other families repatriate the children of Islamic State terrorists at the camp.