PARIS — Europe’s top human rights court condemned the French government on Wednesday for failing to bring home the families of two Islamic State fighters, a landmark ruling that may push France and other European countries to speed up the repatriation of nationals held for years in squalid detention camps in northeastern Syria.
In a statement, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that there had been a violation of the family members’ right to return home, adding that “the French government would be expected to promptly re-examine” the families’ request to be repatriated and “afford them appropriate safeguards against any arbitrariness.”
The decision was the first time that the court had ruled on the repatriation of European families who joined the Islamic State and have been held in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces since 2019, when the extremist group collapsed. Hundreds of family members remain in the camps, presenting a thorny issue to European countries that are torn between their reluctance to bring back individuals associated with traumatic years of terrorism and their commitment to human rights.
Although the court did not require France to repatriate the two families and did not issue a general obligation to bring home all its nationals, the fact that it found the country to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights may prompt France and other European nations to accelerate the repatriation process to avoid future embarrassing legal challenges.
“The judgment could increase pressure on other European countries to repatriate more nationals from northeast Syria, as the court’s findings apply to all state parties” to the convention, said Letta Tayler, a senior counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The decision came two months after France brought home 16 wives of jihadists for the first time, along with 35 children, in an apparent break with its longstanding policy of not repatriating adults and of applying a case-by-case approach to the return of children.
But it has remained unclear whether the country will quickly follow suit by returning the roughly 165 children and 65 women of French nationality who are still stranded in the fetid, disease-ridden detainment camps.
The French Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two mothers and their three children whose cases the court examined — and whose names were not disclosed in the legal proceedings — were not part of the latest repatriation operation, which took place on July 5. Their cases landed before the European court more than two years ago, after they were rejected by French courts.
During the public hearing, held in September, the lawyer for the French government argued that it should not be obliged to repatriate, as it had no control or authority over its citizens in northeastern Syria. France was supported in its argument by seven other European countries, demonstrating the far-reaching nature of the case.
But the court on Wednesday ruled that “there were special features which enabled France’s jurisdiction” over the family members, including that their lives were at risk, that several requests for repatriation had been sent to the French authorities and that Kurdish forces had long called for their return home.
Ms. Tayler said that the judgment was “a damning condemnation of France’s persistent efforts to evade responsibility for its nationals arbitrarily detained.”
The decision was widely welcomed by lawyers, European lawmakers and even some victims of Islamist terrorism who have long denounced what they see as a violation of human rights.
“For several years now, and still at this very moment, women and children are literally dying in these camps,” Dunja Mijatovic, Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said at the public hearing of the case in September 2021. “Their repatriation is, in my opinion, the only way forward.”
Ms. Tayler said that the judgment should be “a wake-up call to European countries that they are flouting the law by abandoning their nationals to horrific conditions.”
Recognizing the dismal security and living conditions in the camps, countries like Belgium and Germany have recently engaged in large-scale repatriations.
Source : Nytimes
