Seven women had warrants and were arrested upon arrival in Paris
France has repatriated 32 French minors and 15 mothers interned in jihadist detention camps in northeastern Syria, the Quai d’Orsay, the name given to France’s foreign ministry, announced on Tuesday.
After arrival on French territory, the minors have been handed over to youth care and will receive medical and social supervision. The women have been handed over to the competent judicial authorities, the ministry said. The Quai d’Orsay thanked the local Syrian authorities for their cooperation, allowing this operation to take place.
Of the 15 repatriated women, aged between 19 and 56, seven had an arrest warrant and will be brought before an examining magistrate this Tuesday. Eight of the mothers were arrested in accordance with a search warrant following their arrival in France, the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office said.
At first, Paris favored repatriation “on a case-by-case basis”, which consisted in bringing only orphans to French soil or children whose mothers had agreed to divorce them. Between 2019 and 2022, France repatriated 35 French minors from Syria, more than half of them orphans, according to data from the United Families Collective, which groups relatives of French nationals who went to areas between Iraq and Syria to wage jihad. Since July 2022, France has been carrying out collective repatriations of children and their mothers.
According to the United Families Collective, some 150 French children and their mothers were held in detention camps in Syria prior to this latest operation. This association ensures that almost all European children held there are French, as other European countries have repatriated their children.
The UN Committee against Torture condemned France last week for failing to respect the convention on torture by refusing to repatriate women and children held in Syrian prison camps. Several French families had come before this commission to denounce the case of their grandchildren who have been held for years in prison camps in Syria and whom France refuses to repatriate. For the same reasons, the French government was already condemned in 2022 by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and by the European Court of Human Rights.
Source: La Verdad
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