France repatriates 15 women and 32 children from jihadist prison camps in Syria

Women and children at the Roj camp in northeastern Syria on March 28, 2021 (illustrative image).

AFP - DELIL SOULEIMAN

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Paris repatriated, on the night of Monday January 23 to Tuesday January 24, fifteen women and thirty-two children detained in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria.

Upon arrival, they were handed over to court and child protection services.

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These thirty-seven French nationals were detained in the Roj camp, a camp controlled by Kurdish forces about fifteen kilometers from the Iraqi and Turkish borders.

Fifteen women who had voluntarily joined areas controlled by the Islamic State organization in Syria and Iraq and thirty-two minors.

Among them, children, women but also, RFI learned, orphans.

The anti-terrorist prosecutor's office specifies that seven of the women repatriated on Monday morning were the subject of an arrest warrant.

They should be presented to an investigating judge during the day and then imprisoned.

The other eight were the subject of a search warrant and are currently in custody.

The children were placed under the responsibility of the prosecutor's office of the Versailles court and were entrusted to the child welfare services.

convictions

This is

the third repatriation operation carried out by France

since July.

Each time, about fifty people were repatriated.

Paris is dragging its feet a bit on this issue.

Before that, France had a case-by-case policy.

But its repatriation efforts have been deemed insufficient by many international bodies: France was in fact

condemned last year by the European Court of Human Rights

and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, then there is few days by the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

According to lawyer Marie Dosé, representing many of these women, there are still around a hundred children and around fifty women, all French nationals, detained in northeastern Syria today.

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  • Syria

  • France

  • Human rights

  • IS

  • Terrorism