Children of Daesh suspects returned to France, showing positive progress

• The children are being closely monitored and are not “ticking time bombs.”
• The prosecutor, Olivier Christen, dismisses concerns about the children’s age and age.
• 170 women have returned to France from Iraq and Syria, including 57 from detention camps.

On Wednesday, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor reported that 364 repatriated children of French parents suspected of joining the Daesh group in Syria and Iraq a decade ago are doing well.

“There are 364 children in 59 departments (areas in France), who are followed by judges for children, and who benefit from coordination from my office to make sure they have optimal care,” Olivier Christen told the France Info radio station.

In 2018, another anti-terror prosecutor had expressed concern that the children of French nationals who joined Daesh after it established a so-called caliphate in 2014 could be “ticking time bombs.” However, Christen, who leads the National Anti-Terror Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) established in 2019 following a series of jihadist attacks, dismissed that concern.

“These 364 children in no way seem to me to correspond to that expression,” he said.

“They are being closely monitored… They pose no particular difficulty.”

“There are very different situations. Some are very, very young children, others are fully fledged teenagers,” he added.

He said that a total of 170 women had returned to France from Iraq and Syria, including 57 from detention camps in northeast Syria in recent years since the collapse of the Daesh caliphate’s territory in 2019.

Of the 364 children who had been brought to France, “169 have been repatriated over the past two years,” he added.

Until 2022, France repatriated children on a case-by-case basis, prioritizing orphans and children of women who had agreed to relinquish their parental rights. Paris changed this policy two years ago.

In 2014, Daesh seized control of large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq. Syrian forces, led by Kurds and supported by a US-led coalition, ousted Daesh from their last territory in eastern Syria in 2019.

Kurdish autonomous authorities in northeast Syria have been holding around 56,000 people, including 30,000 children, in detention centers and camps. These individuals include Daesh fighters and their families, as well as displaced people who fled the fighting.

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