France on Tuesday repatriated 10 women and 25 children who were detained in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria, a fourth collective operation of its kind in a year, which families fear will be the last.
“The minors are handed over to the services responsible for social assistance to children” and will be the subject of medico-social monitoring while “the adults are handed over to the competent judicial authorities”, specified the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. foreigners in a press release.
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that of the 10 women, aged 23 to 40, 7 had been immediately placed in police custody in execution of a search warrant and that the other three, targeted by a search warrant. judgment, would be presented during the day to an examining magistrate with a view to their indictment.
In addition, among the minors, a 17-year-old girl was also placed in police custody. The French adults had voluntarily traveled to territories controlled by jihadist groups in the Iraqi-Syrian zone and had been captured at the time of the fall of the Islamic State (IS) organization in 2019.
Any adult who has joined the Iraqi-Syrian zone and who remains there is subject to legal proceedings. Just a year ago, France put an end to the “case by case” policy, which earned it condemnation from international bodies and blame from French advisory bodies.
Alongside many women of various nationalities, these French nationals live in the Kurdish-controlled Al-Hol and Roj camps, where violence is endemic and deprivation many.
Fear of attacks
In total, 16 women and 35 children were thus brought back to France during a first collective operation a year ago, followed in October by the return of 15 women and 40 children. In January, France then announced the repatriation of 15 women and 32 children, a few days after being condemned by the UN Committee against Torture.
The question of their repatriation is sensitive in many countries, particularly in France which was hit by jihadist attacks, especially in 2015, fomented by IS. France had therefore opted until the summer of 2022 for targeted repatriation, namely the return of orphaned children or minors whose mothers had agreed to renounce their parental rights.
Only around thirty children presumed orphans had thus been repatriated by Paris, the last at the start of 2021.
In early March, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for the repatriation of families held in the Al-Hol camp in Syria, calling it the “worst camp in the world”, which is home to thousands of foreign nationals. The French ministry was unable to say how many French women and children are still detained in Syria.
Last repatriation?
A source familiar with the matter told AFP in May that around 80 French women still in the camps did not want to “return”. This raises the question of the possible repatriation of children when they are mothers.
“There remain in these camps a hundred children who know only the mire, the barbed wire and the violence”, affirmed Tuesday Marie Dosé, lawyer of families of women and children held in the camps of the North-East of Syria.
According to her, France “has the means to impose the return of these children, who can very well be taken with their mothers to Iraqi Kurdistan with a view to their expulsion to France, whether or not this return is accepted by these women. “.
She deplores the double penalty for children “victims (…) of the choice of their parents first, then of that of France, which refused to repatriate them for five years”.
According to the collective of united families, representatives of the French government visited Camp Roj in May, where they spoke with “all French women”. They “asked them whether or not they agreed to be repatriated with their children during a repatriation (…) presented as being + the last +”.
The collective, which denounces living conditions “incompatible with respect for human dignity”, urges the government to take “immediately all the necessary measures to repatriate all the French children detained in Syria, as well as their mothers”. .