One of the two children was “very ill” and this would have motivated the return. From then on, France’s “case-by-case doctrine” was again criticized.
SourceAFP
© DELIL SOULEIMAN / AFP
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UA woman of Franco-Moroccan nationality who was detained with her two children in a Syrian camp was able to be repatriated to France on Monday 3 October. The mother was the subject of an arrest warrant. She was therefore arrested on her arrival and presented to a Parisian investigating judge, according to the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat), contacted by Agence France-Presse (AFP). Her children were taken into care under an educational assistance procedure.
They landed Monday evening at Le Bourget airport aboard a medical plane, an airport source said. “I am delighted that two children, one of whom is very sick, have been repatriated with their mother and escaped the worst,” reacted the woman’s lawyer, Ms.e Marie Dosé, requested by AFP. “But the arbitrary is in full swing: why them and not others? So many children are as sick as this little boy, and some even more, ”she lamented, however. “The Élysée explains that the case-by-case doctrine is over and continues to sort out the children, and to act, in the greatest opacity. What about the orphans who remained in the camps and whose repatriation I have been requesting for more than three years? France has just been condemned by the ECHR and remains stubborn in its inhumanity,” she added.
“We are moving from a case-by-case policy to that of drawing lots, it is incomprehensible and scandalous”, reacted for its part the Collective of United Families, which brings together families of French people who have left for the Iraqi-Syrian zone. Asked, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not comment immediately.
READ ALSORepatriation of families of jihadists: the ECHR condemns France
On September 14, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned France for failing to properly study requests for the repatriation of families of jihadists in Syria. The ECHR had been seized by two French couples who had unsuccessfully asked the French authorities for the repatriation of their daughters, two young women companions of jihadists and their three children. On September 14, she urged Paris to re-examine repatriation requests. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs then took note of this decision and said it was ready to “consider” new repatriations “whenever conditions permitted”.
On July 5, France brought back 35 minors and 16 mothers from jihadist prison camps in Syria, the first such massive repatriation to France of children and mothers since the fall in 2019 of the “caliphate” of the Islamic State.