2023-11-13 23:08:39
For the first time since the capture of Nabil B. by the Kurdish forces of Syria, almost six years ago, his lawyer, Me Etienne Mangeot, managed to get a French judge to look into the fate of this detained Frenchman. in a prison in Derik, in northeastern Syria.
The Nancy lawyer, who had filed a complaint with a civil party on behalf of his client, a suspected jihadist, obtained the opening of a judicial investigation by a Lille investigating judge for the leaders of“arrest, kidnapping and sequestration” as well as “inhuman and degrading treatment” as defined by Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Judge Yoann Viguier received Mr. Mangeot on Monday, November 13 in the morning for a first hearing of the civil party.
No news since 2021
Nabil B., 28 years old and originally from northern France, joined Syria with his wife at the beginning of 2016 in order to join the pseudo-caliphate of the Islamic State (IS) organization. The couple had a son, born in November 2016. Nabil B. was arrested on January 21, 2018 during the campaign to reconquer territories held by IS led on the ground by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), predominantly Kurdish. , with the help of the international coalition against ISIS, including France, which assisted the offensive with airstrikes, as well as the sending of special forces and military advisers. His family has not heard from him since 2021, after the International Committee of the Red Cross stopped visiting Kurdish prisons due to threats of Turkish invasion in the region.
According to the argument developed by Me Mangeot in his complaint, which mentions article 224-1 of the Penal Code on cases of arbitrary arrest and kidnapping, Nabil B. “was indeed arrested, kidnapped and sequestered without orders from the established authorities and outside the cases provided for by law” by the FDS, “an organization recognized by the international community but [qui] is not, however, a constituted authority and even less a state authority..
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Since this date, Nabil B. has been detained by Kurdish forces with other suspected Western jihadists. “The conditions of detention in prisons in northeastern Syria inevitably lead to attacks on the dignity of the human person”states the complaint in reference to inhuman and degrading treatment.
A legal taboo
The opening of a judicial investigation is a breach in the wall of silence on the thorny question of the fate of the hundreds of Western jihadists still detained in Syria. While the debate on the fate of the wives and children of jihadists was sealed in July 2022 with the decision to repatriate all women volunteers with their children – which was carried out during four grouped operations –, the fate of men is a legal taboo. Until now, the official position of the Quai d’Orsay remains the on-site judgment of alleged jihadists under the argument that they must be judged where they committed their misdeeds.
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