France on Thursday repatriated 15 women and 40 children who were detained in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria, the Foreign Ministry announced.
France on Thursday carried out a new series of repatriations of children and women who had joined the territories controlled by jihadist organizations during the existence of the territorial caliphate of the Islamic State, a delicate subject in a country marked by the attacks. of 2015.
A total of 15 women and 40 children who were detained in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria controlled by Kurdish forces arrived at Villacoublay airport near Paris last night. According to a security source, these are 14 mothers, a young adult woman without children and 40 minors.
When they got off the military plane, the adults were immediately brought to justice, some indicted, others placed in police custody. “ The minors have been handed over to the services responsible for child support and will be subject to medical and social follow-up. “Said a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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The biggest repatriation operation for three months
It is the largest repatriation operation of this type for three months, when 16 mothers and 35 minors were repatriated on July 5. Meanwhile, a woman and her two children had been brought back in early October.
” France thanks the local authorities in north-eastern Syria (the Kurdish authorities, Editor’s note) for their cooperation, which made this operation possible “, adds the Quai d’Orsay.
These women are among those French women who voluntarily went to territories controlled by jihadist groups in the Iraqi-Syrian zone and were captured during the fall of the Islamic State organization in 2019. The children are for many of them born locally. Human rights organizations denounce a catastrophic health situation in these camps and Western intelligence services stress the risk of indoctrination of children by the Islamic State group, which continues to lay down the law there.
A hundred French children still in the camps
France therefore seems to have changed its policy, in recent years it had only organized a small number of returns, ” case by case despite the appalling conditions of detention in the Kurdish camps in northern Syria, including for children who had not chosen to go there or to be born there. In September, this attitude of France earned him a condemnation by the European Court of Human Rights.
Around 300 French minors who have stayed in areas where terrorist groups operate have returned to France, including 77 by repatriation, Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said in early October during a hearing before the Senate. The families and their lawyers are now demanding the repatriation of the hundred or so French children who are still in the camps as winter approaches.
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(with AFP)