Tamim Jaboudi's grandfather has managed to visit the child twice in the prison in Tripoli, delivering a winter jacket and as much familial warmth as he can manage in the brief meetings.
But Tamim barely knows him, and by now can hardly remember his parents a Tunisian couple who left their homeland to join the Islamic State group and were killed last year in an American airstrike, according to the grandfather, Faouzi Trabelsi.
"What is this young child's sin that he is in jail with criminals?" asked his grandfather, Faouzi Trabelsi, who has traveled twice to Libya to see the boy and twice returned home emptyhanded. "If he grows up there, what kind of attitude will he have toward his homeland?"
European governments and experts have documented at least 600 foreign children of fighters who live in or have returned from IS territory in Syria, Iraq or Libya. But the numbers are likely far higher.
Both Tunisia and Libya say they want the return of the women and children, but for months any effort to hand them over has fallen apart with little explanation.
That has raised complaints in Tunisia that the government does not want them back for security concerns. But the militia running Mitiga prison, even as it says it want to hand over the families, has tightly controlled access to them, saying the Tunisians need permissions from the office of Tripoli's top prosecutor.
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