France has decided to stop collective repatriations of jihadists’ wives and their children held in camps in northeastern Syria, due to a lack of volunteers.
“As all the mothers who expressed the wish to leave Syria have been repatriated, there will be no more operations of this type,” a diplomatic source told French news agency AFP on Friday.
On Tuesday, 10 women and 25 children were repatriated from Syria. The operation, the fourth in a year, was presented to families as the last of its kind, prompting concern among them.
France cannot “forcibly repatriate people residing abroad, nor of course their children,” the diplomatic source explained, adding that 169 children and 57 adult women had been taken back to France since 2019.
“Some highly radicalised mothers have explicitly stated that they want to remain in Syria,” the source said, without being able to disclose the number of people involved. In May, a source close to the case had told AFP that around 80 French women “did not wish to return.”
Another diplomatic source, however, did not rule out the possibility of repatriating some women on an individual, targeted basis.
These French women had voluntarily travelled to areas controlled by jihadist groups in the Iraqi-Syrian zone and were captured in 2019, when the Islamic State (ISIS) organisation fell.
Any adult who reached the Iraqi-Syrian zone and remained there is subject to legal proceedings.
The issue of their repatriation is sensitive in many countries, particularly in France, which has been hit by jihadist attacks fomented by ISIS, particularly in 2015.
