Despite massive repatriation operations carried out in 2022 and 2023, there are still 120 children and their French jihadist mothers in Kurdish detention camps in northeastern Syria. This is a considerable number, especially because as the years go by, children grow into teenagers, or even young adults. “France today conditions any repatriation operation on the formulation of explicit requests by these women who cannot or do not want to”explains M.my Marie Dosé, who has been campaigning for years for the repatriation of all the children of French jihadists detained in Syria.
The lawyer believes that their current situation is a punishment for the crimes committed by their parents and that by abandoning them to their fate, in camps guarded by Kurdish forces in northern Syria, we are encouraging their early radicalization under the influence of staunch mothers. METROmy Dosé, by mandate of the National Council of Lawyers, and Mmy Matthieu Bagard, co-president of Lawyers Without Borders of France, organized, for the second time in 2024, a trip to the country, at the end of August, with a delegation of seven grandparents of these children.
According to the lawyer, the fifty women who to date have refused any repatriation are divided into two groups, “those who are still very radicalized and those who are afraid, either of other women or of being separated from their children upon arriving in France”. “What I observe over time is that the situation of these children changes and deteriorates”, explain METROmy Bagardo.
“They suffer and waste away”
For the grandparents, who testified anonymously at a September news conference at the two lawyers’ offices in Paris, this was sometimes the first meeting with their daughter since she left for Syria in the mid-1990s. These grandparents, members of the United States. Family Collective, demand the repatriation of the children. For Laurent (name has been changed), “This meeting should have taken place in France and not in a squalid field.”. Our grandchildren are making plans for France. They want to come back, that’s obvious.” “It was at the same time an immense joy [de les retrouver] and the anguish of having to leave our grandchildren and leave them behind, in this camp. [de Roj]where they have suffered and consumed for six years, without protection, without school and without care.”, writes the collective in its press release.
The older children, between 12 and 14 years old, are transferred by the Kurdish autonomous authorities to the Orkesh and Houri rehabilitation centers, as well as to the Alaya prison. The delegation was able to meet with five young adults and a French minor who are imprisoned there. “Their state of health is catastrophic, repatriating them is a matter of life or death”warned M.my Dose.
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