Repatriation of families of jihadists: France condemned by the ECHR – Le Figaro

According to the Court, the rejection of a request for repatriation must be examined by an independent body to verify that the decision “is not based on anything arbitrary”. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned France for n failed to repatriate “daughters and grandchildren of the applicants detained in camps in Syria” in a judgment delivered on Wednesday. France is in breach of Article 3 § 2 of Protocol No. 4 (“No one may be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the State of which he is a national”) to the European Convention on Human Rights. Man.Also readThese “returnees” of the jihad that France repatriates quietlyAccording to the Court, French nationals and their children do not benefit from a general right to repatriation under the right of entry into the national territory provided for by the aforementioned article. Nevertheless, “the rejection of a request to return to the national territory, either because the competent authorities have refused to grant it, or because they have endeavored to comply with it without result, must be subject to appropriate individual examination by an independent body responsible for monitoring its legality”. And in this specific case, the Court considers “that the situation of the applicants’ relatives revealed the existence of exceptional circumstances such as to trigger the obligation to surround the decision-making process with appropriate safeguards against arbitrariness”. The applicants having “ been deprived of any possibility of effectively contesting the reasons given by these authorities and of verifying that these refusals were not based on any arbitrariness”, the Court “clarifies that it is incumbent on the French government to resume the examination of the applicants’ requests as soon as possible by surrounding it with appropriate guarantees against arbitrariness”, concludes the judgment. SEE ALSO – Repatriation of the families of jihadists: “We did not wait for the decision of the ECHR to move forward”, answers VéranA long-term affairThe Court had been seized by two French couples who had unsuccessfully asked the French authorities for the repatriation of their daughters, two young women companions of jihadists , and their three children. The four applicants maintain that this refusal violates several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, a text which the ECHR is responsible for enforcing, in particular by exposing their daughters and grandchildren to “inhuman and degrading treatment”. two women had left France in 2014 and 2015 to join Syria where they gave birth to two children for one, one for the other. Now aged 31 and 33, they have been held with them since the beginning of 2019 in the Al-Hol and Roj camps in northeastern Syria. Asked by AFP, the father of one of them, who wishes to remain anonymous, said he was “reasonably optimistic” about a condemnation of France. “We are waiting for the recognition of the law. May they be repatriated and judged (in France) for what they have done”. If the ECHR does not condemn France, “that will mean (that Paris) has the right to keep children in a war zone (…) because their parents have made the wrong choices”, estimated Me Marie Dosé, one of the family lawyers. She calls not to “blow up the last bastion that is the child and the innocence of the child”. To read also “The repatriation of the jihadists is the only solution so that they are neutralized” The decision of the arm of the Council of Europe will be scrutinized well beyond France, as it also concerns the hundreds of European nationals currently detained in Syria. Seven Member States of the Council (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”, it was estimated with the Defender of Rights, the French ombudsman responsible for the defense of rights, in particular those of children. An independent administrative authority, the Defender intervened in the procedure before the ECHR and had already questioned the French government on this subject on several occasions since 2019, already considering that it did not take into account the best interests of the child. In February, Paris was even singled out by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which considered that France had “violated the rights of French children detained in Syria by failing to repatriate them”. case by case” “The central question” of this file is that of “jurisdiction”, explains the institution: does France exercise its jurisdiction extraterritorially over these mothers and their children in Syria? It is in any case the first time that the ECHR will consider this question. It is indeed from this recognition of jurisdiction that the obligation of the State to repatriate these children and their mothers arises, underlines the Defender. Elsewhere in Europe, countries like Germany or Belgium have already recovered most of their jihadists. For its part, to the chagrin of families and NGOs, Paris has long favored the “case by case”, doctrine defended before the ECHR by its representative. But in early July, France brought back 35 minors and 16 mothers, the first massive repatriation since the fall in 2019 of the “caliphate” of the Islamic State (IS) group. Until then, only a few children had been brought back. The mothers, all targeted by a search warrant or French arrest, were indicted and imprisoned, the minors entrusted to the Childhood Social Aid. According to the coordinator of French intelligence and the fight against terrorism, Laurent Nunez, there remained after this operation a hundred women and nearly 250 French children in camps in Syria. “Whenever we can, we will carry out repatriation operations,” he told AFP in mid-July. SEE ALSO – Repatriation of children of jihadists: a threat?