French Mother Seeks State Action to Repatriate Daughter, Grandchildren from Syrian Camp

After several unsuccessful complaints for 18 months, the mother of the French jihadist obtained a victory on October 10 in Paris, through the opening of a judicial investigation with the charge of "abstention by the French authorities to put an end to an arbitrary detention", indicates a judicial source.

The mother of Estelle K., 30, wants only one thing: the repatriation of her daughter and her three children under the age of 10, stuck in a Kurdish camp in Syria. According to the account of the facts, the jihadist’s family had left France in 2014 to join the group, Islamic State. However, things have gone wrong since the arrest of her husband in 2017. Transferred to Iraq, the latter was sentenced to death in June.

For the lawyers of Estelle K.’s mother, William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, "it is deliberately that we have refused to repatriate our nationals". "To the human rights violations is now added the risk that these families will be recovered by the Islamic State group. France will have knowingly assumed this risk," they said.