On the night of Sunday June 21 to Monday June 22, children held in camps for displaced people under Kurdish control in Syria were repatriated by France, according to the foreign ministry.
"France today proceeded to return ten young French minor children, orphans or humanitarian cases, who were in camps in northeastern Syria," said the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release, relayed by AFP.
The whereabouts of these ten children of French jihadists from Syria has not been specified, nor why they left Syria. "These children were handed over to the French judicial authorities, are now the subject of special medical follow-up and care by social services ", only clarified the Quai d'Orsay.
With the collapse of the Islamic State (IS) group in March 2019, France brought back 28 children from Syria: five in March 2019, twelve in June 2019 and a girl with a heart defect in April.
The French government wishes to "thank" the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in north-eastern Syria for its "cooperation" in this new repatriation, stressing that it has acted "in the light of the situation of these particularly vulnerable young children and in within the framework of the authorizations given by local officials ".
"TAll French children living in camps in Syria are “humanitarian cases. ALL, "tweeted with" immense relief " the United Families group, which brings together relatives of these children in France.
The organizer also clarified: "vingt-eight French children repatriated from Syria since March 2019. Some have been waiting FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS. We must now repatriate all of the children with their mothers, as requested by the UN, UNICEF, the ICRC, the CNCDH … "
For her part, lawyer Marie Dosé, who defends several families, declared to Agence France-Presse: "che children are scarred by the violence of their history. All children are humanitarian cases and their best interest is to be repatriated with their mothers. "
The thorny question of the parents' return
Requests that confront France’s policy which is reluctant to bring back the 150 or so adults, men and women, whom it considers to be accomplices to IS and whose judgment it wishes to judge on the spot. Kurdish authorities say they are detaining around 12,000 foreigners, 4,000 women and 8,000 children in three IDP camps in northeastern Syria, the vast majority in Al-Hol camp. They have often called on the countries concerned to repatriate their nationals, saying that they cannot keep them for much longer.
According to a Kurdish Red Crescent official, interviewed in mid-January by the AFP, in 2019, five hundred seventeen people, including three hundred and seventy-one children, died in Al-Hol camp.