They need treatment ASAP. Two lawyers are asking the French authorities on Friday, August 26 for “an emergency repatriation” of a seriously ill minor currently detained in the Kurdish camp of Roj in Syria. The child’s state of health is “extremely alarming”, according to William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth. It is a child of Estelle K., a woman “left for Syria with her three minor children and her husband in 2014” and “prisoner” since 2017 “in the region of Deir Ezzor (northeast Syria) “.
“His life is in danger. The undersigned urge the government to proceed with the urgent repatriation of this child and his family,” they wrote in a press release. They assure that a French cardiologist seized of the file estimated that an “emergency repatriation is essential. His condition requires that specialized care be carried out”.
“Correspondence addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remains unanswered today. The undersigned are flabbergasted by this silence that nothing explains in view of the very great gravity of the situation. They therefore publicly challenge the authorities to request the repatriation of this child and his family, ”they also write.
The repatriation of a woman also requested
Lawyer Marie Dosé also alerted to the situation of a woman, mother of two, detained in Roj, just like the sick child. This French would have been “victim of a stroke recently, paralyzed, and hospitalized Wednesday for respiratory failure”, assures her lawyer. She said that she had sent “dozens” of alerts and repatriation requests to the French authorities during the summer concerning mothers and their children.
“These children spent three, four or five years in open-air prisons, breathing in the smell of oil wells and receiving no proper care. Many suffer from respiratory failure and bear the scars of their wounds that have never been treated,” she criticizes.
She does not hesitate to underline the physical and psychological consequences of ever later repatriation: “France is keeping them there knowingly. The later the children return to France, the more difficult their medical and psychological care will be, ”she argued.
By July, 35 minors had been repatriated
Sixteen women and 35 minors, some of whom had been living since the fall of the Islamic State group in 2019 in camps in northeastern Syria held by Kurdish forces, were brought back to France on July 5. All the women, targeted either by an arrest warrant or by a search warrant issued by the French courts, were indicted for association with criminal terrorist criminals and imprisoned, upon their arrival on French soil or at the end of a few days in custody. The children were cared for by Child Welfare.
During his first five-year term, President Emmanuel Macron was very reluctant to bring back French nationals who had left to do jihad in Syria, aware that a large majority of French people were resolutely hostile there. Only a few children have been repatriated, according to the “case by case” doctrine.
