Syrian refugee children in a camp on the border between Turkey and Syria on January 29, 2021. -
INA Photo Agency / Sipa USA / SIPA
“The last chance approach”, according to his lawyer.
The mother of a French woman detained in Syria, whom she had joined with her jihadist companion, and according to her family suffering from colon cancer, began a hunger strike on Monday to obtain her repatriation, accusing the French authorities of let it "waste away without judgment."
From her home in Pas-de-Calais, Pascale Descamps told AFP that she had stopped eating on Monday, after months of unsuccessful efforts to obtain the medical repatriation of her daughter and her four grandchildren.
His daughter detained in a Kurdish camp
"If I feel torn by hunger, I might drink some sugar water," adds this 55-year-old woman, whose daughter, now 32, left France in 2015 after convert to Islam, with her three children and her jihadist companion, killed a few months later.
Remarried to another member of Daesh, also killed, she had a fourth child, according to Pascale Descamps.
His daughter is now detained with her children in a Kurdish camp in northeastern Syria, along with dozens of other French women arrested after the fall of Daesh.
She is the subject of an international arrest warrant but "when we look for someone potentially dangerous, we arrest him and we judge him", protests her mother, denouncing "a desire to let them waste away without judgment ”.
"Zero sign of the French public authorities"
In mid-December, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights asked France to "take the necessary measures" to allow her access to medical care, "in view of the information available" on her health.
A request without any effect, according to Pascale Descamps, who affirms that her daughter is weakening more and more.
“The children all have chronic diarrhea because the water is not safe to drink,” she adds.
Since the UN arrest, "zero sign of the French public authorities", confirms his lawyer, Me Emmanuel Daoud.
Pascale Descamps also lodged a complaint last week, for the second time, before the Court of Justice of the Republic, against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for failure to provide assistance.
80 French women and 200 children in Syria
About 80 French women and nearly 200 children live in the camps in northeastern Syria, their relatives, supported by NGOs and international bodies calling for their repatriation.
Paris says it follows a "case by case" policy and has so far repatriated 35 children, orphans or whose mothers have agreed to separate.
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