A sprawling maze of desolate tents under a scorching sun. In northeast Syria, hundreds of women and children live in the dust and misery of the Roj camp administered by the semi-autonomous Kurdish authorities. Mostly captured in 2019 after the battle of Al-Baghouz, the ultimate military defeat of the Islamic State, these women were separated from their jihadist spouses and then taken with their children to this open-air prison, where Daesh ideas still persist. It is from there that, on the night of Monday June 20 to Tuesday June 21, sixteen children of jihadists and six mothers, all of Belgian nationality, were exfiltrated to Brussels.
DNA tests and interrogations
While France, under fire from critics, has not repatriated any children since January 2021, this operation is, in Belgium, the second of its kind in less than a year. In July 2021, the Belgian authorities had already brought back six mothers and ten children from Syria. Last May, a consular delegation was sent to Roj to carry out DNA tests and interrogations, then determine the number of children of Belgian descent still locked up in the camp, leading to this new wave of repatriation.
“These are children who have absolutely nothing to do with the bad choices their parents made,” justified Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Tuesday June 21, following criticism from the opposition. “Our priority has always been to get these children back. [Ils] were in very poor conditions, with a very high risk of being exposed to extremism. »
“Controlled Returns” also constitute the “best guarantee” for the “national security” believes Ocam, the Belgian organization responsible for analyzing the terrorist threat, for which “the security situation in the camps is very fragile, and escapes cannot be ruled out”. A scenario whose risks are “eventually much higher” to those potentially generated by repatriations. Sentenced in Belgium, the mothers were all imprisoned immediately upon their arrival on Belgian soil, while the children were taken care of by the youth prosecutor’s office.
200 French children still stranded
Since January 1, 2022, 27 European women and 65 children have been repatriated. “Among them, not a single Frenchman”, deplores the lawyer Marie Dosé who has been campaigning for years in favor of the repatriation from Syria of the French children of jihadists and their mothers.
“The only French children who have been able to be repatriated are orphans or children separated from their mothers, continues the lawyer, castigating the “lack of political courage” of the French government which continues to refuse the repatriation of the latter, even though a plan has been ready since 2019. “We add trauma to trauma”, she laments.
On February 24, France was condemned by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child for violating “the best interests of the child”, from “right to life” and the right of children to the protection “against inhuman and degrading treatment”. While only four women and five children of Belgian origin remain detained in Syria after Monday’s operation, nearly 200 French children are still stranded in these enclaves where the situation continues to deteriorate.