France continues to repatriate children of jihadists "drop by drop"

It was through a laconic press release that the Quai d'Orsay announced, Monday, June 22, the arrival in France of ten children of French jihadists from camps in northeastern Syria. For this fourth operation to repatriate minors since the fall, in March 2019, of the "caliphate" of the Islamic State organization, a French delegation went to Qamishli, in Syrian Kurdistan, according to an official of the autonomous administration Kurdish. "These children [the youngest of which is two years old] have been handed over to the French judicial authorities, and are now the subject of special medical monitoring and treatment by the social services," the press release said.

Three of the minors are not orphans, but their mothers "agreed to send them to France because of the conditions in the camp," a Kurdish source told AFP. This brings to 28 the total number of French children who have been able to leave the camps in north-eastern Syria, mainly in Roj and Al-Hol, where 200 to 300 of them are still detained and watched by Kurdish forces in Syria, according to the French authorities.

>> Read also: "The puzzle of the repatriation of the children of jihadists in Europe"

Repatriation on a case by case basis

The French doctrine of "case by case" stipulates that only orphans of father and mother can be repatriated, or those whose parent is still alive and has given his authorization to return to France. This solution, applied by many European countries, is "completely incomprehensible" for lawyer Vincent Brengarth, who defends several families of women and children of French jihadists detained in Syria.

"They live in extremely precarious conditions, in tents, far from any possibility of having access to a doctor, of being educated. They are out of circuit. This leads to an abnormal situation and in violation of fundamental rights," says he in France 24. According to him, the global epidemic of coronavirus only aggravates the "humanitarian danger" in the camps of the northeast of Syria. "The longer we extend the situation, the more their trauma continues, and the more we will have difficulty allowing them to reintegrate into society."

#CNCDH welcomes the fact that 🇫🇷 has repatriated 28 children from #Syria. The CNCDH has issued a notice calling for the repatriation of all #en French children detained in Syrian camps. #OnNNNNPNTerroriste.
👉 https://t.co/m4U02WRPRd https://t.co/tE8KkMKRbN

In a tweet published Monday, the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights, a French public agency accredited to the United Nations, welcomed the arrival of the ten children but recalled its request for "repatriation of French children detained in Syria as well as their parents without further ado. " The UN issued a similar opinion in January, the president of the Independent and International Commission of Inquiry on Syria judging "scandalous" that the States whose nationals are imprisoned in Syria do not bring out the children quickly. Some miners have already spent two years in extremely precarious sanitary conditions: in 2019, 517 people, including 371 children, died in the Al-Hol camp, a Red Crescent official told AFP in mid-January Kurdish.

Still a very sensitive issue

"The resistance of the French state is entirely political. One cannot decently believe that they are not aware of the violation of fundamental rights, of privacy, of the right to health, but also of priority protection of the right to the child ", denounces Vincent Brengarth. On January 11, the Minister of Justice, Nicole Belloubet, had raised the possibility of the repatriation of French jihadists detained by the Kurds in Syria, before those around her were back-pedaled.

The question remains very sensitive for the government of Emmanuel Macron, while several polls have shown that public opinion is extremely unfavorable to the return of jihadists and their families to be tried in France. "There needs to be a uniform policy which does not consist in repatriating certain children drop by drop. They cannot be held responsible for their parents' choices. For the latter, the situation is as paradoxical as it leads to be judged neither by France, nor by any other state, so we leave them in these camps, from where they can escape. "

>> Read also: "The majority of French detainees in Syria are children, according to Nicole Belloubet"

The Kurdish authorities, who claim to detain around 12,000 foreigners, 4,000 women and 8,000 children, have themselves often called on the countries concerned to repatriate their nationals. In addition to the very difficult living conditions in the camps, the guarantee that prisoners remain in good custody diminishes with the days. According to the Terrorism Analysis Center, at least thirteen French jihadists have escaped from the camps where they were detained in recent months.

With AFP

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