FRANCEINFO SURVEY. From jihadist prison camps to learning “classic life”, the long road for children repatriated from Syria – franceinfo

Like every Wednesday at 11:45 a.m., in this mild beginning of autumn, Adil* springs from school and runs towards Myriam*, his grandmother. The 5-year-old boy with laughing brown eyes lives with the septuagenarian. On the way home, he hops. In appearance, nothing distinguishes him from his little comrades. However, Adil lived in Syria in camps for jihadist prisoners of the Islamic State (IS) group. He only arrived in France a year and a half ago. In terms of repatriation, Paris applies the doctrine of “case by case”. But France has been changing its policy since a conviction by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in mid-September. Thus, a new repatriation, with 15 women and 40 children, took place on the night of Wednesday 19 to Thursday 20 October. At the beginning of the month, the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, counted 217 minors who had returned from the Iraqi-Syrian zone, including 77 born on the spot. Adil was one of them. He was born in 2017, two years after his mother left for Syria. Today, this thirty-year-old French woman is indicted for terrorist criminal association and placed in pre-trial detention. Adil’s father, an IS fighter, died before he was born. Once arrived at his grandmother’s, the boy rushes to his room. “A, B, C, D…” He is proud to recite the letters of the alphabet stuck on his white magnetic board. “He was delighted to discover the school and found friends”, comments his grandmother. Adil is enrolled in football and tries skating. Her grandmother plans to take her to the circus and the theater. “He’s a little lively, but very intelligent”, slips Myriam, who deploys all her energy for her grandson. “He likes to help me. I created a little gardening corner for him, he sowed seeds”, she continues, pointing to the perimeter of her house. A setting far from the camps where he transited with his mother. “He was not injured but he arrived in poor health,” says Myriam. “They have known the bombardments, life in tents, scorpions, cold, hunger, the guards’ mistreatment of families, the absence of medical care.” Myriam *, grandmother of a child repatriated to franceinfo “Their memories of Syria will be the barbed wire. These sinister camps in which these children remained for years because France refused to repatriate them”, underlines Marie Dosé , a lawyer who defends several families concerned, including that of Myriam. Adil has retained physical scars from this life: he is missing teeth. “And he has this hyperactivity,” notes his grandmother. At the beginning of his placement, he was afraid of men, “because the soldiers beat his mother”. “But he doesn’t have nightmares,” assures Myriam. The little boy is followed closely and the appointments follow one another with the dentist, the child psychiatrist, the psychomotrician… to which are added specific administrative deadlines for these children often without civil status. It all starts on arrival on French soil. When returns are scheduled, the planes land either at Villacoublay air base (Yvelines) or at Roissy airport (Seine-Saint-Denis). In these departments, the services of justice, child protection, health or National Education are then mobilized. The care is specific, strictly framed by interministerial instructions (PDF), under the aegis of the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office, which ensures the “centralized monitoring” of these minors, according to the terms of a circular dating from April . The text provides for somatic and medico-psychological assessments, and sometimes psychomotor, speech therapy and neuropsychological assessments. DNA tests to establish the parentage of the child are carried out. “These children have not received vaccines. Some have serious undiagnosed illnesses. Others have parasitosis, oral problems… They may have major language disorders”, notes Nicolas Bosc, doctor-psychiatrist at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny. The establishment, located in Seine-Saint-Denis, has taken care of more than a hundred repatriated minors since 2017. The professionals have three months to assess them, then direct them to the medico-psychological center (CMP) of their sector. “But they are saturated, sometimes there is a year of waiting,” sighs Nicolas Bosc. Its service therefore follows about fifty children. All professionals agree that the vast majority of these children are polytraumatized. Even if “everyone is different”, Nicolas Bosc observes common symptoms, such as sleep and eating disorders. Hyperactivity is also part of it. “There is excitement, a lot of anger, sadness… Their emotional responses are inadequate,” he lists. In some, the doctor also notes a “hypervigilance”. “Among teenagers, we have a lot of identity problems”, continues the doctor, who specifies that half of the children welcomed are under 6 years old. “The arrival in France is not the end of their difficulties”, insists Nicolas Bosc. This trip to France, Adil remembers it well. “We flew and watched a movie,” he says. What he doesn’t talk about is the separation from his mother on the airport tarmac. Since the beginning of the repatriations, the women have been expecting this deadline, which is no less painful. “My daughter said to her son, ‘Mommy is going to jail.’ A child is never prepared for this,” confides Myriam once Adil has gone back to play.
Separations are all the more difficult when mothers maintain a close relationship with their children. “For years, they were skin to skin, like a kangaroo and her baby,” compares Myriam. Today, Adil still calls his mother “oummi” (“mom”), the only Arabic word he remembers. He visits her regularly in the visiting room, or in the presence of an educator. He brings her his school notebooks. “The separation from the mother is a trauma whose existence cannot be denied.” Clélie Pellottiero, inspector of the Childhood Social Assistance (ASE) of Seine-Saint-Denis at franceinfo “In the camps, the mother is the only figure of attachment for the child, while being the one who brought it there”, explains Muriel Crebassa, coordinator of the Versailles children’s court. Faced with this “ambivalent” role, the child’s feelings are also often so. Upon their arrival on French soil, the women are placed in police custody or presented to an examining magistrate, while the children are entrusted, through the intermediary of the ASE, to families or reception structures. . “They are the cornerstone of daily support. With ups and downs, depending on the situation”, develops Clélie Pellottiero, inspector of the ASE of Seine-Saint-Denis. “The host family is a therapeutic relay”, confirms the psychiatrist Nicolas Bosc. Myriam also salutes their delicate work. Before moving in with her, her grandson lived for a year with a foster family, with whom he kept in touch. “She gave him love, Adil needed it,” explains the grandmother. Nevertheless, his lawyer Marie Dosé warns: “You should not let a child emotionally invest too long in a foster family that he will then have to leave.” This is the reason why, when grandparents, uncles or aunts can welcome them, it represents a temporary link. “The host family played the game and made it clear that life at home was temporary”, testifies Viviane*, who with her husband Michel* took in her three grandchildren repatriated from Syria in 2019. The couple points to a photo in a frame on a shelf. “The day of the reunion… It was exceptional. They threw themselves into our arms. They were well prepared”, explains their maternal grandmother, moved. We read the happiness on the faces. They carry their three grandchildren who were then 1 year old, 3 years old and 5 years old. “The last time we saw the eldest, he was 6 months old,” says the sixty-something. Shortly after, her daughter had joined the Islamic State group with her baby and her husband. The other two children were born in Syria. The mother died in 2018. The father is in prison. The first meeting, organized several months after the return of the siblings, lasted two hours, in the presence of a referent from the ASE and an educator. “We played with the eldest. The youngest, it took longer to tame her… We had brought photos of their mother, stuffed animals and candy”, recalls Viviane. The second publicized visit is organized fifteen days later. “The children called us grandpa and grandma! It was going well, so the ASE referent accelerated things,” she reports. The half-day meetings follow one another. Then they spend the school holidays with their grandparents, until their placement is ordered by the juvenile judge, almost a year after their arrival. “Since then, we have become ‘parents-grandparents'”, she smiles. Once again, the protocol obeys a strict framework. A temporary placement order is pronounced as soon as you get off the plane. Then, the children’s judge, seized by the competent public prosecutor’s office, organizes a first hearing, two to three weeks after the return. Judicial measures of educational investigation are launched and entrusted to the Judicial Protection of Youth (PJJ). In particular, it must be ensured that the extended family does not adhere to the theses of the Islamic State, as a Parisian children’s judge explains. Viviane thus had three interviews with the services of the PJJ, before receiving them at home. “They wanted to see the children’s future rooms, to know if we were able to accommodate them, to know our history,” she explains. A report is drawn up and a second hearing is organised, after approximately six months, to decide whether to maintain or lift the placement of the child. “It takes time to progress. The decision of the children’s judge adapts to the evolution of each situation. We see what is in his interest”, specifies the coordinator of the children’s court of Versailles, Muriel Crebassa. If Myriam, Viviane and Michel have the physical and financial resources to welcome the children, this is not the case for all grandparents. “Some foster children see their extended family once a month and live it very well”, assures Nicolas Bosc. “Today, these children want to get back on the bandwagon. There is nothing to suggest that they are ‘time bombs'”, continues the psychiatrist, with reference to comments made by François Molins in 2018. The magistrate does not is explained on BFMTV, but the expression has remained anchored. “Some have seen abuses and a tiny minority have been trained as child soldiers,” said Nicolas Bosc. But we are far from the “lion cubs of the Caliphate”, the image desired by the jihadist propaganda of the Islamic State. “The context means that they are not children like the others, but there is no question of sticking a label on them”, insists Clélie Pellottiero, recalling that many “are doing well, when others are worse”. “The objective is to allow the re-enrollment of these children in a traditional life, far from the violence they may have known in the camps.” Clélie Pellottiero, ASE inspector at franceinfo “Children need time to talk and talk about the reality they have known”, adds the ASE inspector. This is what happened with the eldest of the grandchildren of Viviane and Michel, now 8 years old. “We never asked him any questions. We expected him to talk about it. He confided during a walk, about his life in the camp. He remembered a country at war, the ‘boom’. He knows he was in Syria. The rest will come when he needs it,” said Viviane. In the meantime, his past is not leaked. In schools, apart from the management and the teacher, no one knows where these children come from. Viviane told her grandson: “It’s your story. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it, but you don’t have to tell it.” Myriam did the same with Adil: “Might as well tell him the truth. There is no reason to trivialize his story. He must appropriate it with serenity.” *Names have been changed. Certain geographical indications are not mentioned for the safety of the respondents.