The children of an Islamic State fighter who were abandoned in Syria have been reunited with their mother, a month after the Guardian tracked down their family in Trinidad.

Mahmud and Ayyub Ferreira, now aged 11 and seven, were abducted by their father and taken to Syria in 2014, where they spent several years living in the so-called caliphate before ending up in Kurdish custody.

On Monday, they were released into the care of their mother, Felicia Perkins-Ferreira, who had never left Trinidad before travelling 6,000 miles from the Caribbean to be reunited with her sons in north-east Syria.

After crossing the Iraqi border with the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, the family was flown to Switzerland with the help of Roger Waters from the rock band Pink Floyd.

The two boys and their mother cried when they were reunited in the Syrian Kurdish administrative capital, Qamishli, hugging each other close. Perkins-Ferreira cleaned their faces with baby wipes and changed them into the clean clothes she had brought with her.

‘That was the first time I’ve slept properly in four years,’ said Perkins-Ferreira of the long drive back to Iraq. Photograph: Josh Surtees/The Guardian

More used to humidity and tropical heat, the Trinidadian mother was well wrapped up against biting temperatures that dipped to -2C.



On the long drive back across the border to Iraq, Ayyub and Mahmud slept on their mother’s lap. She slept, too, she said.



“That was the first time I’ve slept properly in four years,” said Perkins-Ferreira, who said she had been left traumatised by being separated from her sons. “I often wouldn’t eat for days, thinking: ‘If they’re not eating, why should I?’”

On Tuesday, the family travelled to London where the two boys will receive counselling to help them recover from their ordeal.

“I’m really, really grateful and I wish I could meet [all the people who helped] all in one and embrace them,” said Perkins-Ferreira.

Kidnapped the day after Ayyub’s third birthday, the boys spent several years in Isis territory before the US-led coalition closed in and their father sent them out of Raqqa towards Turkey with their Belgian stepmother.

They were found on the side of the road by the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces and held at Camp Roj with the families of dead or imprisoned militants.

The boys’ father is believed to have died in the fighting and their step-mother is being held in a different Kurdish camp.

The brothers were so traumatised by their experiences they could not remember their mother’s name, but they clung on to pictures of her, which the Guardian used to find Perkins-Ferreira in Petit Valley, a quiet suburb just outside Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain. She had received only intermittent news of her sons over the past four years.

Brothers Mahmud and Ayyub from Trinidad, after being reunited with their mother Felicia Perkins-Ferreira being helped by Clive Stafford Smith Photograph: Josh Surtees/The Guardian

Stafford Smith, of the international legal nonprofit Reprieve, enlisted the financial help and private jet of Waters to get the Ferreria boys out of Syria, after asking the Trinidad and Tobago authorities to issue emergency travel documents for the children.

At the river border where the Tigris separates Syria from Iraq, officials hurriedly ushered the family on to a boat across the fast-flowing river and through a checkpoint kept open beyond normal hours to accommodate their passage.

As the snow-capped mountains on the Turkish side of the triangular border receded and night fell, the marathon journey was extended by a two-hour police security check in Dohuk, where officers verified the boys had been taken to Syria against their will and posed no threat.

In Erbil, where they arrived shortly before 1am, they were embraced by an emotional Waters, who put them up in a suite on the top floor of the Rotana hotel.

The following morning, they boarded a plane chartered by Waters to Zurich, from where they travelled to London to begin a rehabilitation programme Reprieve has put in place before their return to Trinidad.

“We’re going to make sure that they get on with a really productive, decent life,” said Stafford Smith. Ayuub dreams of being a professional footballer and Mahmud wants to become a cricketer.

About 1,200 more children like Mahmud and Ayyub are believed to be stuck in a legal limbo in Syria after the defeat of Isis.

Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called on their western partners, including the UK, to take their nationals home, but many governments have stonewalled the issue. At least 12 British children, most of whom were born in the caliphate, are believed to be in Kurdish custody.