France is continuing to return its nationals detained in camps in Syria. A woman and her two children were repatriated on Monday, October 3, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, confirming information from several sources familiar with the matter.
The mother, of Franco-Moroccan nationality, targeted by an arrest warrant, was arrested on her arrival at Le Bourget airport and presented to a Parisian investigating judge, according to the PNAT. Her children were taken into care under an educational assistance procedure. Asked, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not comment immediately.
In July, sixteen women and thirty-five repatriated minors
“I am delighted that two children, one of whom is very sick, have been repatriated with their mother and escaped the worst”reacted the lawyer of this woman, Me Marie Dosé, interviewed 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 so”she however lamented. “The Elysée 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 [Cour européenne des droits de l’homme] and remains stubborn in his 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.
On July 5, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the return to France of sixteen jihadist women and thirty-five minors, including seven unaccompanied children. A sudden acceleration of repatriations, while France had until then led a policy of return in dribs and drabs, decried by women and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
“Careful consideration”
On September 14, the European Court of Human Rights condemned France for not having adequately studied the requests for repatriation of the families of jihadists, detained in the north-east of Syria, in camps managed by the Kurdish authorities. “In execution of its judgment, the court specifies that it is incumbent on the French government to resume the examination of the applicants’ requests as soon as possible by surrounding it with appropriate guarantees against arbitrariness”ordered the European body to France, which took ” deed “ of the decision.
The ECHR had been seized by two couples claiming in vain the repatriation of their daughter, two young women companions of jihadists, and their grandchildren. The four applicants maintained that this refusal violated the European Convention on Human Rights, a text which the ECHR is responsible for enforcing, in particular by exposing their daughter and their grandchildren to “inhuman and degrading treatment”.
“We did not wait for the decision of the ECHR to move forward”reacted the government spokesman, Olivier Véran. “Each file, each human situation in the end, is the subject of careful examination”he assured, while a hundred women and nearly 250 French children still live in the Syrian camps.