September 29, 2021. Last resort for Marie Dosé. The Parisian lawyer for several children and women detained in camps in North-East Syria, pleads against France before the European Court of Human Rights. To refuse to repatriate them is to expose them to inhuman and degrading treatment, deplores the lawyer. On the day of this hearing, Marie Dosé repeated: “The authorities who detain these women have explained for three years that they do not want to judge them. The difficulty is that these women, they are all the subject of an international arrest warrant.”
On July 5, change of doctrine at the Elysée. The first mass repatriation of children of suspected jihadists and their mothers since 2019 has taken place. Until then, repatriations were “choose” drop by drop, denounces Marie Dosé. She points to the unbearable living conditions in the camps for those who remain and the risk that these families will be taken over by Daesh. She especially regrets the time wasted on this file.
“It’s dizzying where we have come anyway. We left children in prison camps in war zones for three or four years.”
Marie Doseat franceinfo
“We took the risk that they would die. A mother died, that is to say she survived Baghouz, but not the camp. She was dying in front of her little daughter for three years. “Élysée with photos of her arms. On 42 occasions, my requests for medical repatriation ended with you going to let her die in front of her granddaughter. She’s dead. I didn’t think it would come to this,” says Marie Dosé.
How to explain the change of doctrine of Emmanuel Macron since in the end this decision belongs to him?
“That decision has always been his. wants to clarify the lawyer. “I still want to remind you that it’s at the Elysee Palace that these decisions are made and nowhere else. I think that Emmanuel Macron was very, very feverish on this issue until his second term, now he doesn’t There are more electoral stakes. I think he was mistaken about the state of public opinion, which is not fixed. He was afraid of it. He shouldn’t have. We made a real educational work for three years, three and a half years. He does not want to remain the President of the Republic, who will have left 200 children and their mothers to perish in camps”, commented Marie Dosé.
On the debate that this file arouses in French society, between fear and incomprehension. “French society debates everything. It spends its time debating for or against it, no. In Germany, children come home with their mothers. It is not a subject. on should they return or not? The Germans are taking a political decision which is that of repatriation. There is no debate”, Marie Dosé responds scathingly. The lawyer says she feels close to the families and especially the children she represents. She has forged strong ties, in particular through the many videos and messages received from the camps she has visited twice.
“I remember very well the first grandmother who came to my practice. I think it was in October 2018. Can you imagine? It’s been almost four years now and she came and she said to me, here it is, my daughter went to the Kurds with my two grandchildren who are six months and two years old. They are in a camp. She explained the situation to me and she said to me, would you agree to help to obtain their repatriation? I answered her but madam, you are not going to pay a lawyer for that. I can help you to write a letter to the Quai d’Orsay. But of course they will be repatriated. Four years later , we still have 170 children and 60 mothers in these camps.”
“We must fight terrorism with the rule of law, not with inhumanity, because in this case, they are the ones who won.”
Marie Doseat franceinfo
“When I started, I had very, very little support. It was a fight that some people thought was illegitimate. And what’s interesting, I think it will only happen to me once in my life. , is to see to what extent all those who were able to decry this fight, smear it or judge me, sometimes even threatening or insulting me, three and a half years later, not only salute him, but act as if “they didn’t think differently at the very beginning. All that means that nothing is ever lost, but still, I have in mind me, all the time, all the time, I tell myself but when they have fifteen, sixteen, what are we going to explain to them? How do we explain that we preferred to take the risk of seeing them die rather than seeing them return? Isn’t that how we make the worst?” commented Marie Dosé.
Since their return, the mothers, all indicted for criminal association, terrorists, criminals, have been sleeping in prison. Their children, in homes or foster families, can visit them. They are now trying to build a normal life in France.