This is the largest repatriation operation of this type for three months. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, Thursday, October 20 in a press release, that “15 women and 40 children” were repatriated from Syria overnight. A repatriation of 16 women and 35 children had already taken place in early July. Meanwhile, a woman and her two children had also returned to France in early October. Here is what we know about the return of these 55 people to French soil.
Women aged 19 to 42 and several orphans
The returnees were held in jihadist prison camps controlled by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, the Foreign Ministry said. Among the 40 children, seven are orphans or, at least, isolated, specifies the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) in a press release. Many of them were born there.
The women are between 19 and 42 years old. They are among those French women who voluntarily went to territories controlled by the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq and were captured during the fall of ISIS in 2019. Other French people are still in these camps . “There are about 160 children and 70 women left”, said Thursday on franceinfo Marie Dosé, criminal lawyer at the Paris Bar and representative of the United Families Collective, which brings together relatives and families of women and children detained in Syria.
Among them, the “orphans” must “to be a priority”, added the lawyer, who fears “that they have not all returned”. Government spokesman Olivier Véran said on LCI on Thursday that there were still “still a few dozen other children to repatriate”. “There will be some collective repatriation movements. This is done gradually”, he added.
Minors cared for by Children’s Aid, adults handed over to justice or to the DGSI
Minors, separated from their mothers, “have been handed over to the services responsible for Childhood Aid and will be the subject of medico-social monitoring. The adults have been handed over to the competent judicial authorities”, details the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its press release.
Three women must be presented to an anti-terrorism examining magistrate to be indicted, specifies for its part the Pnat. The others were taken into custody at the premises of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI). They were the subject of a search warrant. This judicialization corresponds to a procedure set up specifically for the return of French nationals from jihadist prison camps.
>> Syria: what are the steps awaiting mothers and children repatriated to France?
Among those placed in police custody is a 19-year-old young woman, taken to Syria when she was a minor, reports the anti-terrorist prosecution. This young woman “is accused of having remained there when she was brought to Syria by her parents. All minors in this case are systematically indicted when they become adults”, commented Marie Dosé to franceinfo. Lone of his clients was 10 years old when she left. She is not one of the returnees. “She is still there, it’s a scandal”, denounces the criminal.
A relief but a “half victory” for families
In a press release, the United Families Collective “Welcome everyone who returns”. “May these children, hard hit by years of captivity, rebuild themselves and be happy, may they finally live a child’s life and find their family”, welcomes the association in a press release. “This is excellent news (…) but a half-victory because 40 children have been repatriated and there are more than 170 left in the Roj camp”, underlines to AFP Amine Elbahi, lawyer and resident of Roubaix, who was fighting to obtain the repatriation of his nephews detained with his sister.
He hopes to see his nephew and niece soon but is awaiting details on this subject. “I can not wait !”, he confided, specifying that he was going to undertake “steps to collect them at home”, although it should take “time, and that’s normal”. According to him, the children, who “terribly lacked access to care and food in the camp”, are in a “rather worrying medical and psychological state”.
“It’s good news. But I can’t help but think of those who were left there and who see their friends leave, their friends’ mothers and who must say to themselves: ‘But why not me? ?'”, emphasizes Marie Dosé for her part. “What is terrible is that these repatriation operations are being done in dribs and drabs, even if, there, we welcome the fact that the children are finally returning with their mother and that we are not out of four or five or six children, but on dozens of women and children”, she continues.
A change of doctrine in France
According to the United Families Collective, this repatriation operation seals “the renunciation of the case-by-case policy, which consisted of arbitrarily repatriating such and such a child, and thus carrying out an abject selection (…) by separating them from their mother left behind and sometimes from their siblings”. “France is cornered after four years of proceedings. It has been condemned by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. It has been condemned by the European Court. It no longer has the choice of choosing responsibility and humanity”, supports Marie Dosé.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned France on September 14 for failing to properly consider these requests for repatriation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has since expressed its readiness to “consider” new feedback, “whenever conditions permit”. For Marie Dose, “vsWhat is sad is that France took four years to do it and that four years is the time of a childhood”.