INQUIRY EUROPE 1
Since the Turkish offensive in northern Syria, several escapes have already been observed in two ISIS fighters' camps. A major question arises: what to do with French jihadists held by the Kurds? How to prevent them from taking advantage of the current mess to escape?
They are about 400, of whom 300 are women and children. Which means that there are a hundred fighters, French, from the Islamic State. So what plan does the government have in mind? This is the survey conducted by Europe 1.
Jean-Yves Le Drian went to Iraq
In this context, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, went to Iraq to discuss this thorny subject. Discussions have begun, in a very discreet way, for several months. These discussions concern the possibility of a transfer of 50 to 100 French jihadists considered to be the most dangerous. The goal? Exfiltrating them from detention camps in northern Syria, where fighting is raging between Kurds and Turks to take them to Iraq, where there is less risk of them evaporating into the wild.
France's action is confined to diplomacy, even though French special forces are present in the area. The reason is simple. If France escorts these detainees itself, it must necessarily be done in a French legal framework, which would impose de facto to repatriate them to France.
"If the French forces intervene themselves, they will have to repatriate the jihadists to judge them"
This is explained by Patrick Baudouin, a lawyer specializing in international law: "If the French forces intervene themselves directly to lend a hand to the departure of these jihadists camps northeastern Syria, it is incumbent on the French authorities to go to the end of the process: to repatriate them to judge them themselves, they are taken out of an area which is not controlled by a State, and must necessarily be brought back to French territory. that does not want to take, undoubtedly, the French State ".
France will therefore have to negotiate on several levels: first, to get the Iraqi government to agree to hand over several dozens of our jihadists to its territory, at the same time as it will repatriate its own. And then to obtain the agreement of Baghdad to give a legal framework to these new detentions of French in Iraq.
Both conditions of Baghdad
The Iraqi authorities do not seem hostile but Baghdad has two conditions. The first: that France financially assumes the cost of their detention on Iraqi soil.
The second, more difficult, is to ensure that the legal framework of their detention and trial on the spot does not trigger an international outcry again. As a reminder, 11 French jihadists from Baghouz, the last bastion of the IS that was resumed last March, were tried in Iraq and some sentenced to death. The human rights associations had seized the subject, which became very publicized.
And even if France lobbied for these sentences not to be executed, Iraq does not want a new scandal. So strictly Iraqi legal framework or International Court? Seven countries including France sent legal delegations to Iraq to settle this crucial point.
Every country works in its own way
Each country operates differently with its nationals. In the case of the United States for example, it is information Europe 1, the US army has already exfiltrated from Syria about fifty of its most dangerous jihadists. They were transferred in recent days to a camp in northern Iraq. Among them, two members of the unit who had tortured and beheaded the American journalist James Foley in 2014.
If the United States has been able to act so quickly, it is because they do not have the same legal obligations as France: for example, they have never recognized the international criminal court.