Ten women repatriated last week to France from jihadist prison camps in Syria were indicted for criminal terrorist association and placed in pre-trial detention on Monday, October 24, Agence France-Presse learned from the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office ( PNAT).
Subject to a search warrant, they had been placed in police custody upon their arrival on French soil, on the night of October 19 to 20, in the premises of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI ).
One of them was also indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide. Some have also been indicted for evasion by a parent of his legal obligations compromising the health or safety of his child.
Minors “handed over to child welfare services”
Another young woman, aged 19, taken to the Iraqi-Syrian zone as a child, was subjected to “of educational care, no element having at this stage made it possible to require his indictment”. The state of health of a twelfth woman has been judged ” incompatible “ with presentation to an examining magistrate. She is currently being taken care of medically and administratively.
All had been repatriated with three other women who, subject to an arrest warrant, had been indicted on October 20 and imprisoned. Forty children were also repatriated with these fifteen women, aged 19 to 42 and captured in the territories of northeastern Syria and northern Iraq occupied until 2019 by the Islamic State (IS) group. then kept in camps under Kurdish control.
The children, many of whom were born there, “have been handed over to the child welfare services and will be subject to medico-social follow-up”, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of these, seven are orphans or isolated, according to the PNAT.
This is the second major repatriation operation in three months: on July 5, France had returned sixteen mothers and 35 minors. Meanwhile, a woman and her two children had also been brought back in early October.
In the hours following this second operation, the government spokesman, Olivier Véran, declared on the LCI channel that there would still be “some collective repatriation movements” and “it would be done gradually”. The authorities in charge of the fight against terrorism had specified in July that there remained a hundred women and nearly 250 children in the Syrian camps.