PARIS (Al Jazeera) – France has repatriated 54 nationals from camps in northeast Syria where families of suspected Daesh terrorists are held, just weeks after a European court condemned it for leaving nationals in dire and dangerous conditions there.
Fourteen women and 40 children who had for years lived in tents controlled by Kurdish forces landed near Paris in the early hours of Thursday morning.
This is France’s third repatriation operation in three months. On 5 July, 16 mothers and 35 children were repatriated, and a woman and her two children were brought back in early October.
“The minors have been handed over to child support services responsible for child support and will be subject to medical and social monitoring,” read a press release from the foreign affairs ministry. “The adults have been handed over to the relevant judicial authorities.”
Among the children flown home were seven who were either orphans or separated from their parents, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) said in a statement. The women are between 19 and 42 years old.
Three of the women subject to an arrest warrant were directly presented on Thursday to an anti-terrorism judge to be charged, and 12 others were taken into custody. Among the latter is a 19-year-old taken to Syria when she was a minor, according to the PNAT.
They are among the French women who went - either voluntarily or under duress - to territories controlled by Daesh in Iraq and Syria and were then captured during the fall of the group in 2019. Many of the children were born in Daesh-controlled territory or in the camps themselves.
The European Court of Human Rights called on France to re-examine its decision to refuse to repatriate two French women held in Syrian detention camps in a landmark case in September. The case was brought by the parents of the women, who had travelled with their partners to parts of Syria and Iraq then controlled by Daesh.
The French nationals are among roughly 60,000 women and children who live in two sprawling Kurdish-run camps, al-Roj and al-Hol, in the semi-autonomous Hasakah region of Syria.