“The longer they stay there, the less they will like France. They are recoverable if we take care of them now,” says the neuropsychiatrist in the JDD.
The famous neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik urges Emmanuel Macron on Sunday January 16 to repatriate the approximately 200 French children of jihadists detained in Syria, as well as their mothers, because they constitute on the spot “a threat to our security“.
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“The longer they stay there, the less they will like France. They’re salvageable if we deal with them now.“says Boris Cyrulnik in the columns of the Sunday newspaper. “I think the president fears that these repatriated children will become jihadists. But I say no, and my idea does not fall from the sky, it is based on scientific observations (…) if we take care of them very early, they will not become dangerousadds the 84-year-old doctor and author.
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Chairman of the Committee onfirst 1000 days of child“, who in September 2020 submitted a report to the Head of State on this crucial period – from conception to the infant’s two years – for the development of the child, Boris Cyrulnik pleads to also repatriate the mothers of these children .
“We risk making bombs”
“For these children, their mother is the only basis of security. Repatriating them alone is an aggression and an additional isolation. They will probably hate the country that inflicted this suffering on them. It is a factory of delinquents, very easy to recover by extreme ideologies. We risk making bombs“, explains Boris Cyrulnik.
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According to him, repatriating mothers and children together “could trigger (in children) the process of neural resilienceby which the brain can overcome trauma. And “the earlier, the easier it is“. “The non-stimulation of the brain causes (…) an enlargement of the area that generates impulses. In the small child, this results in anger, which turns into incivility and ends up costing the State very dearly.“, he develops.
“If we wait too long, the changes will take too long (…) they (the children) will only express violence“, he adds. About 80 French women, who had joined the Islamic State organization, and 200 children are detained in Kurdish camps in Rojava, northeastern Syria.
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Lawyers, parliamentarians, NGOs and the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights regularly urge the French authorities to repatriate them. They maintain a case-by-case return policy for these children – 35, mostly orphans, have been repatriated so far – and believe that adults should be tried on the spot.
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