Children at Roj camp, where the French children of jihadists are held, in September 2020. -
Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP
Two deputies sent a letter to all their colleagues to increase the pressure on the government and demand the repatriation of the children detained in the Roj and Al-Hol camps, in northeastern Syria.
A delegation of elected officials and lawyers also went there earlier this week to try to enter this territory controlled by the Kurds.
For their part, Unicef and the UN reiterated the repatriation request, reminding States, including France, of their obligation to protect children illegally detained in disastrous sanitary conditions.
It's a race against time that has started.
Privileged since 2017 by the Elysee, can the “case-by-case” repatriation of children of French jihadists detained in camps in northeastern Syria continue?
For the families of the 80 women who left to join the ranks of Daesh and the 200 minors detained in northeastern Syria, France can still change its doctrine.
Aware of the unpopularity of a collective return of these children a few months before the campaign for the presidential election, lawyers, NGOs and now parliamentarians are increasing the pressure to move the line of the executive.
This week, and for the first time, a delegation made up of two MEPs and two MEPs attempted to visit the Al-Hol and Roj camps.
In vain, since the Kurdish authorities refused them entry into this territory.
Accusing France of having "put pressure" on the local authorities to prevent them from carrying out their mission, the deputies Frédérique Dumas and Hubert Julien-Laferrière and the MEPs Sylvie Guillaume and Mounir Satouri call on the President of the Republic "to take its responsibilities ”.
Parliamentary offensive
Since the beginning of the year, France has been singled out on several occasions for its management of its nationals who left to fight in Syria and are now detained there.
Beyond the fate of jihadist women, the situation of their children - two-thirds of whom are under six years of age - raises concerns and misunderstandings.
So far, only a few parliamentarians had timidly tackled the subject when questioning the government.
On February 10, two deputies, Pierre Morel-A-L'huissier (UDI) and Pierre Laurent (PCF) went further, questioning all their colleagues by mail on this subject.
In his letter, the UDI deputy for Lozère calls on France to "take the measures imposed by the situation of these children" and denounces: "On the pretext that French public opinion is mostly hostile to the return of the mothers of these children, the France chooses to sacrifice them.
"Contacted by
20 Minutes,
Pierre Morel-A-The bailiff adds that he wishes to file" a motion for a resolution in the coming weeks calling into question the responsibility of France ".
"My colleagues will then have the choice to ratify and vote on it," he explains.
A parliamentary offensive which has therefore intensified this week with the trip to Syria of the four elected officials, accompanied by several lawyers.
During a press conference organized on Wednesday when they got off the plane, they blasted the security risk represented by the government's policy towards these nationals.
“All French people can understand that if we let these children grow up in these camps, they will come out with hatred of France.
We take the risk of making them future radicalized recruits, ”explained Hubert Julien-Laferrière, non-registered Rhône deputy (Generation ecology).
Humanitarian emergency and international pressure
For Marc Lopez, this political intervention is "important".
Her four grandchildren, aged 10, 6, 4 and 2, have been imprisoned since April 2018 in the Roj camp.
The youngest, "born in a tent", knew nothing about Daesh.
Contacted by
20 Minutes,
this member of the “United Families” collective asks: “These children are innocent.
Everyone knows that there will be no judgment on the spot, nor an international tribunal in Syria.
As for any decisions taken by a Kurdish court, they will never be recognized by the French courts.
So what do we do ?
We keep the children until when?
What is the plan ?
"
Especially since the situation is increasingly untenable on the spot, warns Lucile Marbeau, communications officer at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Iraq (ICRC).
“The Al-Hol camp is overcrowded.
It is estimated that 60,000 people are there, two thirds of whom are children.
There is an upsurge in respiratory ailments in the youngest children who also suffer from diarrhea and malnutrition, ”she explains.
And security there is increasingly fragile.
On Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced the “temporary suspension of its activities” in Al-Hol after the murder of one of its employees there.
On the international scene, this humanitarian emergency is helping to increase pressure on the Elysee.
After a first alert from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in December, United Nations experts urged France and 56 other countries on February 8 to repatriate their nationals stranded in Kurdish camps, judging that they had the "capabilities" to do it.
A few weeks later, Unicef also called for the “safe repatriation of all children from Al-Hol camp and northeastern Syria”.
The immutable French doctrine
But at the highest level of the State, the doctrine of "case by case" remains the only policy considered and possible.
In total, only 35 children - mostly orphans - have been brought back to France since the fall of Daesh.
The adults, them, must be judged on the spot considers the executive and this in spite of the absence of recognized judicial authority in Syrian Kurdistan.
In June 2019, faced with the inertia of the authorities, Marc Lopez and his wife tried to visit their grandchildren in the Roj camp.
“Once there, we obtained the authorization of the Kurds and, at the last moment, while Austrian and Swedish families were able to see their relatives, we were told: 'For the French, it's no.'
And we were told that the orders came from "above".
In other words, from Paris ”.
A version denied a few months later by a close friend of the Minister of Foreign Affairs who received Marc Lopez: “He told us that they had nothing to do with it and that they had no control of the camps.
"
Yet it is the same scenario reported by parliamentarians on Wednesday on their return from Syria: “Our interlocutors were contradicting each other.
They kept telling us that they wanted us to enter Rojava, that they were making every effort to make our visit possible and ultimately that they could not let us enter […].
During a lunch at the border post, one of our interlocutors ended up telling us: "We have too important relations with France to allow you to enter".
In essence, he did not want to get angry with Paris, ”detailed deputy Frédérique Dumas.
Asked this Wednesday at the end of the Council of Ministers, government spokesman Gabriel Attal explained that he had not "yet received the response from the Quai d'Orsay on this subject".
Contacted this Wednesday
,
neither the Elysée nor the Quai d'Orsay had responded to the
20 Minutes
requests
.
Painful silence
To this inflexibility is added the “silence” of the French authorities, regret the families of these children.
Informed since November that her daughter, detained in Roj, would be suffering from colon cancer, Pascale Descamps, 55, began a hunger strike on February 1 to demand her repatriation and that of her four grandchildren. children.
"After 31 days of hunger strike, my client is very fragile psychologically and physically,"
Emmanuel Daoud, lawyer for Pascale Descamps
, told
20 Minutes
.
The criminal lawyer, who defends several female jihadists detained in Syria, protests against the indifference of the executive.
“There was no contact.
Nothing, zero, nada.
Is beyond me ".
Marc Lopez, he now calls for a jump.
“We hope that this mobilization will succeed, because the closer we get to the presidential deadline, the more it will become complicated.
It's terrible, but today the life of French children depends on an electoral calculation, ”he laments.
An observation that the UDI deputy, Pierre Morel A-L'Huissier, does not want to resolve: “Why is everyone silent on this subject?
Because it is not electoral.
I was insulted after sending my letter, I was treated as a collaborator!
I am a member of Parliament for Lozère, I don't have a voice to win on this!
But I have an ethic and principles and, today, we flout all that.
This is not acceptable and we must act ”.
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