The European judicial authority forces French justice to re -examine the requests of two families in the name of the protection of the interests of children, currently retained in Syrian camps.
Le Monde
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) made a highly anticipated judgment on Wednesday, September 14, on the repatriation of families of French jihadists two months after Paris, long very reluctant to return its nationals who have gone to do The jihad in Syria, brought back 35 minors and 16 mothers.
The court was seized by two couples of French who had asked, in vain, the French authorities the repatriation of their daughters, two young women companions of jihadists, and their three children. The four applicants argue that this refusal violates the European Convention on Human Rights, a text that the ECHR is responsible for enforcing, in particular by exposing their daughters and grandchildren to “inhuman and degrading treatments”.
The two women had left France in 2014 and 2015 to join Syria where they gave birth to two children for one, to the other. Now aged 31 and 33, they have been retained with them since early 2019 in the camps of al-Hol and Roj, in northeast Syria.
“In execution of its judgment, the Court specifies that it is the responsibility of the French government to resume the examination of the applicants as soon as possible by surrounding it with the appropriate guarantees against the arbitrariness,” wrote the Large House of the ECHR, its highest instance.
This judgment “will mark the jurisprudence of the court”
The decision of the judicial arm of the Council of Europe will be scrutinized far beyond France because it also concerns European nationals held in Syria. Seven council member states (Norway, Denmark, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Sweden) thus intervened in the procedure.
This judgment “goes beyond the Franco-French framework” and “will mark the jurisprudence of the court”, estimates the defender of rights, the French ombudsman responsible for the defense of rights, in particular those of children.
Independent administrative authority, she intervened in the procedure before the ECHR and had already arrested several times since 2019 the French government on this subject, already believing that he did not take into account the best interests of the child .