Thursday, October 20 at dawn, 15 jihadist women and 40 French children detained in camps in northeastern Syria were repatriated by the French authorities. It was the largest operation of this type carried out by France to date. The previous one, which concerned 16 women and 35 minors, on July 5, marked a major turning point and a change in doctrine: after more than three years of blockage, Paris decided to repatriate all of its nationals and their children. detained since the final fall of the pseudo-caliphate of the Islamic State (IS) organization in March 2019 in Baghouz.
The last repatriation operation actually began on Tuesday 18 October. That day, the Kurdish administration of the Roj camp, where Western jihadist women and their children are detained, called several French women with their children. While they are grouped together in a large tent erected near what is called the “yellow house”, where the camp administration sits, their tents are knocked down by the Kurdish guards.
French special forces in charge of the extraction, accompanied by officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, arrived on site on Wednesday 19 October. There followed a new sorting and sometimes sordid negotiations. Thus, a mother of five children, including a 19-year-old girl and a seriously ill minor boy, is asked to choose between returning with her four minor children, abandoning her adult daughter there, or staying with her daughter and her three other children. able-bodied children by letting his sick son go alone. A massive mobilization of lawyers, including his counsel, Mr.e Martin Pradel, near the Quai d’Orsay and the Elysée finally made it possible to repatriate all of the siblings.
Another tragic case is that of a slightly disabled woman left behind with two young children on the pretext that she is sheltering her husband, blind and amputee, in her tent. This man had been deemed too impotent to be incarcerated in the maximum security prison for men in Hassaké. However, French doctrine consists in repatriating women and children, but not adult men.
« Improvisation »
The most flagrant failure is the one that happened to the G family. During the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the French authorities called Mr. G. to tell him that his daughter had returned to France with his/her children. But on arrival, his lawyer finds no trace of it. In fact, there had been confusion. Mr. G. received an official letter of apology two days later.
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