France Repatriates 10 Women and 25 Children from Jihadist Prison Camps in Syria

Paris a “carried out a new operation to return children and mothers to the national territory” from Syria, announced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tuesday, July 4. Ten women and 25 minors from jihadist prison camps have returned to France. As the Quai d’Orsay specifies, minors are entrusted to the child welfare services and are subject to medico-social monitoring. Adults are handed over to the competent judicial authorities. “France thanks the local administration in northeast Syria for its cooperation, which made this operation possible”adds the ministry.

The ten adult women are aged 23 to 40, specifies the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat). Seven of them were placed in police custody in execution of a search warrant, three others, who were the subject of an arrest warrant, will be presented to an investigating magistrate during the day, specifies the Pnat .

A 17-year-old girl in police custody

Among the 25 minors is a 17-year-old girl, who was also the subject of a search warrant, adds the Pnat, noting that she has been placed in police custody. The other minors are cared for within the framework of educational assistance procedures under the responsibility of the public prosecutor’s office at the Versailles judicial court.

This is the fourth time that France has repatriated French women and children detained in jihadist prison camps. In January she had proceeded to the repatriation of 15 women and 32 children held in northeast Syria.

Marie Dosé, lawyer for the families of women and children detained in these camps, regrets in a press release obtained by France inter that there are still “in these camps a hundred children who know only mire, barbed wire and violence”. She is also indignant that “France made the repatriation of these children conditional on the agreement of their mothers”. “France has the means to impose the return of these children, who can be taken with their mothers to Iraqi Kurdistan with a view to their expulsion to France, whether or not this return is accepted by these women”she adds.