France repatriates Syrian detainees

France repatriated 15 women and 32 children held in jihadist prison camps in Syria yesterday, the foreign ministry said, in the third major return of French citizens from the Middle Eastern country.

Rights groups have been pressing for years for France to take back the wives and children of Islamist fighters held in the camps since the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group was ousted from its selfdeclared “caliphate” in 2019.

But the government refused a blanket repatriation, saying the return of potentially radicalised IS family members would pose security risks in France, which has seen a wave of jihadist terror attacks since 2015.

Instead, it said individual cases would be examined, which saw the first group repatriation of 16 mothers and 35 children from Syria in July 2022, and a further 55 last October.

The children returned to France yesterday were at the Roj camp in northeast Syria under Kurdish administration, about 15 kilometres from the Iraqi and Turkish borders.

They were placed with social services and the mothers will be brought before judicial authorities, the foreign ministry said, thanking “the local administration in northeastern Syria for its cooperation, which made this operation possible”.

The operation came after the United Nations Committee Against Torture said on Thursday that in refusing to repatriate women and minors in Syria, France was violating the UN Convention against torture and cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.

In a version of a ruling dated Nov 16, 2022 released by a lawyer of relatives of detainees in the Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp in Syria, the committee said that “not taking all reasonable measures in its power to repatriate the plaintiffs’ relatives would constitute a violation by a member state of articles two and 16 of the convention”.

Rights groups have denounced harrowing sanitary conditions, malnutrition and overcrowding at the Al-Hol camp in particular.

The lawyer who published the UN torture committee ruling, Marie Dose, said 150 French women and children were being held in the Syria camps before yesterday’s repatriation.

Contacted by AFP, the French foreign ministry declined to say how many more women or children might be returned.