Seven women had an arrest warrant and have been arrested upon arrival in Paris
France has repatriated 32 French minors and 15 mothers who were interned in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria, the Quai d’Orsay, the name given to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced on Tuesday.
After their arrival on French soil, the minors have been handed over to child support services and will undergo medical-social monitoring. The women have been handed over to the competent judicial authorities, the ministry explained. The Quai d’Orsay thanked the local Syrian authorities for their cooperation, which made it possible for this operation to take place.
Of the 15 repatriated women, between the ages of 19 and 56, seven of them had an arrest warrant and will be presented this Tuesday before an investigating judge. Eight of the mothers have been arrested after their arrival in France in compliance with a search warrant, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office specified.
At first, Paris favored “case by case” repatriation, which consisted of bringing to French soil only orphaned children or those whose mothers had agreed to separate from them. Between 2019 and 2022, France repatriated 35 French minors from Syria, more than half of them orphans, according to data from the United Families Collective, which groups relatives of French people who went to areas between Iraq and Syria to do jihad. . Since July 2022, France has carried out collective repatriations of children and their mothers.
According to the United Families Collective, before this latest operation there were some 150 French children and their mothers detained in prison camps in Syria. This association ensures that almost all of the European children detained there are French, since other European countries have repatriated theirs.
The United Nations Committee against Torture last week condemned France for failing to respect the convention on torture by refusing to repatriate women and children detained in Syrian prison camps. Several French families had come before this committee to denounce the case of their grandchildren detained in prison camps in Syria for several years and that France refuses to repatriate. The French government was already condemned in 2022 by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and by the European Court of Human Rights for the same reasons.
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