Middle East

France says wont take back Syria extremist fighters and their families

France has ruled out the repatriation of French extremists and their families detained in Syria after the fall of ISIS “caliphate”, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said Friday.

France and other European nations have been wrestling with how to handle the hundreds of foreign fighters, many of whom are being held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces which led the final push against ISIS.

French daily Liberation reported Friday that in early March the government had been ready to bring home around 250 men, women, and children before abandoning the plan given public hostility to the repatriations.

The issue is extremely sensitive in France, where a deadly 2015 attack on the capital claimed by ISIS killed 130 people and set off a wave of other deadly assaults since then.

“Its logical that our services considered all hypotheses. This was one of the hypothesis they prepared,” Castaner said at a press conference following a meeting of G7 interior ministers in Paris.

“No communal repatriation was under consideration to be carried out,” he said, reiterating that France would nonetheless study bringing back children of extremist fighters on a “case-by-case basis.”

He denied Liberations claim that Frances policy with regards to fighters in Syria was being dictated by public opinion.

Last month, French authorities for the first time brought home five orphaned children of French extremists from camps in northeast Syria.

According to the UN childrens agency UNICEF, around 3,000 foreign children from 43 countries are housed at the al-Hol camp in Syria alone, which has taken in most of the people fleeing ISIS self-proclaimed “caliphate” in recent weeks.

Up to 1,700 French nationals are thought to have travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight with the extremiRead More – Source

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alarabiya

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