While the subject is currently at the heart of debates in France, Germany and Denmark have decided to repatriate from Syria some of their nationals who had joined Daesh, as well as children.

Berlin announced on the night of Wednesday to Thursday that it had repatriated eight women and 23 children in the largest operation of this type carried out by the German authorities since 2019.

During the same operation, carried out with the logistical support of the American army, Denmark brought out of Syria three women and 14 children, according to a press release from German diplomacy which speaks of a "tour de force".

Six women arrested on arrival

“Children are not responsible for their situation (...).

Mothers will have to answer for their actions before the criminal justice system, ”said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

In fact, the German Federal Prosecutor's Office, competent in particular in matters of terrorism, announced Thursday morning the arrest of three of these Germans when they got off the plane in Frankfurt, "strongly suspected of belonging to a terrorist organization abroad. ". 

Copenhagen also announced the arrest of three of the women on their arrival in Denmark, charged with "promoting terrorist activities" and "entering and residing in a conflict zone".

The case of Romiena S.

One of the Germans, presented as Romiena S., is also suspected of complicity in crimes against humanity in connection with the atrocities committed against the Yazidi minority by Daesh, according to the prosecution. The federal prosecutor's office describes Romiena S., one of the women arrested, as having arrived in Syria in December 2014 with her daughter, against her father's wishes. Previously, she had already organized the recruitment and departure to Syria of a 16-year-old girl.

Once in Syria, she married "at least six members of Daesh one after the other", according to the prosecution, specifying that she was showing her child videos of executions of the jihadist organization.

At the end of 2016, in Raqqa, Daesh's stronghold in Syria, she also “probably” employed for household chores a member of the Iraqi Yazidi minority, reduced to the status of slave. 

From children to mothers deprived of their nationality still in Syria

The German diplomacy specified that they were people, and in particular children, identified "as in particular need of protection", "sick children or having a guardian in Germany, as well as their brothers and sisters and of their mothers ”.

They were held in the Roj camp (north-eastern Syria), under Kurdish control.

The NGO Save the Children welcomed the return of these children but deplored that five other children from Denmark still remain in Syria, their mothers having been stripped of their nationality.

According to the daily Bild, representatives of the German Foreign Ministry and the criminal police landed in northern Syria on Wednesday morning aboard a US military plane.

The plane then left with the women and children for Kuwait from where the group took a flight to Frankfurt.

The repatriation puzzle

Since the fall in March 2019 of the "caliphate" of Daesh, the international community has been faced with the headache of repatriating the families of jihadists captured or killed in Syria and Iraq. Most countries of the European Union carry out repatriations on a case-by-case basis. In its latest repatriation operation, carried out in December 2020 jointly with Finland, Germany brought five women and eighteen children from Syria. Returnee Germans are between 30 and 38 years old, according to Der Spiegel magazine.

According to Bild, there are still around 70 adults of German nationality in Kurdish-controlled camps in northern Syria, as well as around 150 children of German nationals.

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recently examined the requests of two couples who demand from France the repatriation of their daughters, companions of jihadists, and their grandchildren, detained by the forces Kurds in Syria.

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