The Quai d’Orsay announced the return to France last Thursday of 40 children and fifteen women from jihadist prison camps in Syria. Ten of them were indicted for criminal terrorist association and remanded in custody on Monday, said the national anti-terrorism prosecution (Pnat).
These women, who were the subject of a search warrant, had been placed in police custody upon their arrival on French soil during the night of Wednesday to Thursday, in the premises of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI ). One of them was also indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide.
Some have also been indicted for evasion by a parent of his legal obligations compromising the health or safety of his child. Another young woman, aged 19, taken to the Iraqi-Syrian zone when she was a child, was the subject of “educational care, no element having at this stage made it possible to require her under examination”.
The state of health of a twelfth woman was deemed “incompatible” with presentation to an examining magistrate. She is currently being taken care of medically and administratively. All had been repatriated overnight from Wednesday to Thursday with three other women who, subject to an arrest warrant, had been indicted on Thursday and imprisoned.
Children “handed over to child welfare services”
Forty children were also repatriated with these fifteen women, aged 19 to 42, who had been captured in the territories of northeastern Syria and northern Iraq occupied until 2019 by the Islamic State group and kept in camps under Kurdish control.
The children, many of whom were born on the spot, “have been handed over to the services responsible for child support and will be the subject of medical and social follow-up”, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had indicated. Among them, seven are orphans or isolated, according to the Pnat.
This is the second major repatriation operation in three months: on July 5, France had returned 16 mothers and 35 minors. Meanwhile, a woman and her two children had been brought back in early October.
In the hours following this second operation, the government spokesman, Olivier Véran, had declared on the LCI channel that there would still be “a few collective repatriation movements” and that “it would be done gradually”.
The authorities in charge of the fight against terrorism had indicated in July that there remained a hundred women and nearly 250 children in the Syrian camps.