Americans and Europeans disagree over the repatriation of jihadists currently held in Syria. A meeting was held on Thursday night in Washington to discuss the situation. The United States requests repatriation of its nationals to European countries. Except that this is not the position of Europe, says Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French Foreign Minister.
For the former Minister of Defense, French jihadists must be tried where they committed their crimes. "There are many jihadist fighters who are now imprisoned in Iraq and Syria, in Iraq there are between 11,000 and 12,000 coming from all over, and also from Iraq and Syria. Dozens of French All Europeans believe that these fighters should be judged where they committed their crimes, so we are working today to implement a specific jurisdictional tool that is able to do so ", explains the French minister.
The children of repatriated jihadists?
The most difficult issue is the children of jihadists, who have been forced to follow their parents to Iraq or Syria. On this subject, Jean-Yves Le Drian wants to hear about repatriation. "Children are something else, we have already started to repatriate some but it is very difficult because it is a war zone, I hear here and there to repatriate! Yes but it is the So if we can repatriate others we will do it is the position of France and other European countries.
For the Foreign Minister, it is clear that French nationals who have gone to jihad will have to be judged as terrorists. "They are our adversaries, they are our enemies, they fought with Daesh, so let's put things back in their place, and the jihadist fighters have fought with the terrorists, they are terrorists, we have to judge them as such."
The French intelligence services estimated 730 the number of French (men and women combined) to have visited Syria or Iraq, among them between 300 and 500 would have died. 261 would have returned to France.