France on Thursday carried out a new round of repatriations of children and women who had joined territories controlled by jihadist organizations during the existence of the Islamic State’s Territorial Caliphate, a sensitive subject in a country marked by attacks in 2015.
15 women and 40 children who were detained in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria controlled by Kurdish forces arrived at 3:30 am local time (01:30 GMT) tonight in Villacoublay, near Paris.
According to a security source, it is about 14 mothers, a young woman without children and 40 minors.
“The minors have been handed over to the services responsible for child support and will be subject to medical and social follow-up. The adults have been handed over to the competent judicial bodies”, the announcement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states.
It is the largest repatriation operation of its kind in three months, when 16 mothers and 35 minors were repatriated on July 5. Meanwhile, a woman and her two children had returned in early October.
“France thanks the local authorities in northeastern Syria (Kurdish authorities, editor’s note) for their cooperation, which made this operation possible,” added the Quai d’Orsay.
These women are among those French women who voluntarily went to territories controlled by jihadist groups in the Iraq-Syria area and were captured during the fall of the Islamic State Organization in 2019.
Children are for many of them born in the country.
About 300 French minors who stayed in areas where terrorist groups operate have returned to France, including 77 with repatriation, Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said in early October during a Senate hearing.
The subject is sensitive in France, a country hit several times by jihadist attacks, and especially those of November 13, 2015 in Paris and the suburbs of Paris, where 130 people were killed, instigated by the Islamic State (IS) organization.
Under pressure from the families of these jihadist women held in particularly harsh conditions in prison camps, France has long carried out measured, case-by-case repatriations.
But on September 14, the European Court of Human Rights, seized by the parents of two of these women, condemned France for not having properly studied these requests.
After that, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was ready to “consider” further repatriations “whenever conditions permit”.
In July, the authorities responsible for the fight against terrorism had indicated that a hundred women and nearly 250 children remained in the Syrian camps.
