France's anti-terrorism prosecutor says that 364 repatriated children of French parents suspected of joining the Islamic State armed group in Syria and Iraq a decade ago are "doing well".
"There are 364 children in 59 departments who are followed by judges for children and benefit from coordination from my office to ensure they receive optimal care," prosecutor Olivier Christen told FranceInfo radio on Wednesday.
In 2018, another anti-terror prosecutor had expressed concern that the children of French nationals who joined IS after its 2014 so-called caliphate could be “ticking time bombs”
Christen – who leads the National Anti-Terror Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT), opened in 2019 following a series of jihadist attacks – dismissed that fear.
"These 364 children in no way seem to me to correspond to that expression," he said.
"They are being closely monitored ... They pose no particular difficulty."
He noted that their situations varied greatly: “Some are very, very young children, others are fully fledged teenagers.”
In response to Christen’s remarks, France’s United Family Rights Collective said in a post on X: "There are still 120 French children being held in Syria in appalling conditions."
Repatriation of Syrian children
Since the collapse of IS’s territorial control in 2019, 170 women have returned to France from Iraq and Syria, including 57 from detention camps in northeast Syria.
Of the 364 children brought back to France, "169 have been repatriated over the past two years", Christen added.
Until 2022, France only repatriated children on a case-by-case basis, prioritising orphans and children whose mothers had agreed to give up parental rights.
Paris changed that policy two years ago, accelerating the return of both women and children.
IS seized large areas of Syria and Iraq in 2014 before Kurdish-led Syrian forces, backed by a US-led coalition, ousted them from their last stronghold in eastern Syria in 2019.
Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria are holding around 56,000 people – including 30,000 children – in detention centres and camps. Among them are IS fighters and their families, as well as displaced people who fled the fighting.
