PARIS: France repatriated 15 women and 32 children held in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria, the French foreign ministry said Tuesday.
\n\u201cThe minors were handed over to the services in charge of child assistance and will be subject to medical and social monitoring,\u201d the ministry said in a statement.
\nIt added that \u201cthe adults have been handed over to the competent judicial authorities.\u201d
\nOver the past decade, thousands of extremists in Europe traveled to Syria to become fighters with the Daesh group, often taking their families to live in the self-declared \u201ccaliphate\u201d it set up in territory seized in Iraq and Syria.
\nSince the \u201ccaliphate\u201d fell in 2019, the return of family members of fighters who were captured or killed has been a thorny issue for European countries.
\nThe return announced Tuesday \u2014 which was committed due to pressure from humanitarian organizations \u2014 is France\u2019s third large-scale repatriation.
\nThe previous one was in October last year, when Paris repatriated 15 women and 40 children, and in July, when 16 mothers and 35 minors were returned.
\nThe women and children repatriated Tuesday were in the Roj camp in northeast Syria under Kurdish administration, located about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the Iraqi and Turkish borders.
\nThe French authorities thanked \u201cthe local administration in northeastern Syria for its cooperation, which made this operation possible.\u201d
\nTuesday\u2019s operation comes shortly after the UN Committee against Torture condemned France for failing to repatriate French nationals from prison camps in northeastern Syria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: France repatriated 15 women and 32 children held in jihadist prison camps in northeastern Syria, the French foreign ministry said Tuesday. \u201cThe minors were handed over to the services in charge of child assistance and will be subject to medical and social monitoring,\u201d the ministry said in a statement. It added that \u201cthe adults […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-309370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n