Constant Méheut
NY Times, July 5, 2022
“About 165 children and 65 women of French nationality are still stranded in the fetid, disease-ridden detainment camps run by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, where they are in a state of legal limbo.”
France brought home 16 wives of jihadists from sprawling detention camps in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, breaking with a policy that for years had ruled out repatriating and trying adult women who had left to join the Islamic State.
The women were accompanied by 35 children — some traveling with their mothers, others who are orphans — in what was the largest such group repatriated in one go by France as the government responded to mounting pressure to shift its approach.
France had long resisted calls by rights groups and security experts to repatriate adult women, saying that it considered them “fighters” who should be tried where they were accused of committing crimes, in Syria and Iraq.
Even as such local trials proved impossible, France stuck to its position and refused to bring home not only adults but also most children, repatriating only a few dozen over the course of three years, following a piecemeal approach that came to contrast with most of its European neighbors.
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