Prisons holding ISIS members in Syria a breeding ground for radicalization, officials say

With so much ground to cover and such a high threat level, more and more militants are slipping through the net. The huge ISIS prison break two years ago was staged from these sprawling sands.

Dozens of sleeper cells attacked using suicide bombs and armed trucks; 1,000 prisoners escaped. Over 100 were never recaptured, and 120 SDF officers and local civilians were killed.

The attack ended after 10 days only thanks to coalition airstrikes. Local authorities warned they couldn't defeat another escape attempt alone if U.S. forces leave Syria.

Nureddine Berham is a high security prisoner at Al Sina'a. We were given rare access to speak with him before the Moscow attack. A militant jihadist to his core, he's been joining up with Islamist militias to fight Western ideology since he traveled to Pakistan to support Osama bin Laden in the '90s.

Originally Jordanian, the rest of his family are American citizens, and he claims he traveled to the U.S. regularly on visas until the mid-2000s. In Syria, he signed up with ISIS as a suicide bomber, but was captured.

Leila Molana-Allen:

The Syrian Democratic Forces estimate there are at least 10,000 ISIS fighters still active in the area, and that number is growing.

Now, in a speech posted online, ISIS leaders have called on their supporters to plan fresh attacks on cities around the globe. Former U.S. Army Colonel Myles Caggins was the coalition spokesman in Iraq and Syria at the height of the battle to defeat ISIS. For him, Northeast Syria's overflowing jails are a ticking time bomb.

Col. Myles Caggins (Ret.), U.S. Army: The world doesn't really want to deal with these 10,000 detainees. President Biden and his administration have followed the policy of the previous administration, where nobody really wants to talk much about Syria.

The American public, in particular, does not hear much about ISIS until there's something like a massive attack that happened in Russia. It is important, though, for the world to pay attention to ISIS.

There are wealthy individuals who support ISIS' ideology. The scale and type of attacks that they conduct do not require a lot of money, but they're able to get a large effect out of them by having these attacks in highly visible places and recording the attacks and sharing it as propaganda, propaganda that is desired — designed to inspire other members of ISIS. It's designed to inspire potential recruits.