French ISIS suspects want to go home, and ‘go on with my life’

Three French women who escaped from a camp for suspected extremists in northern Syria say they want to go home and face whatever legal action France requires over their alleged links to ISIS.

The three, interviewed in Syria’s Suluk town, controlled by Syrian factions backed by Turkey, said they had fled during the chaos of Turkey’s offensive into Syria last month and turned themselves over to Turkish forces in hopes of returning home.

The women, who declined to give their names, suggested they were prepared to go to France for the sake of their children, adding that conditions in the camp in Ain Issa, run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), had been very hard.

The women gave no details of their life before detention.

They are believed to be among the wives and children of former ISIS fighters killed or detained after the extremist group was expelled from its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

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Ankara’s unilateral offensive angered Washington and Turkey’s main European NATO allies, who fear a return of ISIS in the region.

European countries are especially concerned about foreign ISIS fighters and adult relatives returning to Europe.

France has said citizens who joined the militant group, which operated in both Syria and Iraq, should be tried near where crimes were committed.

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However Turkey says it will start repatriating ISIS detainees to their own countries on Monday, sending them back even if their citizenships have been revoked.

The women’s preferred destination was France.

“We want to go back for our children to go on with their lives,” said one of the women, who like the others wore the niqab or full face veil.

“I’ve been here for five years and I want to go back and go on with my life, go back to the time I lost. That’s it.”

A second woman said she wanted to return to France “quickly” and whatever the French courts decided was “not a problem.”

Their lives in the detention had been difficult. “Children got sick very quickly. There was not much to eat,” she said. “I want to go back to France with my son.”

A third woman said: “We have no problems with a ruling in France. It is for that reason that we handed ourselves over to the Turks, to go back to our country.”

File photo of one a French woman, a wife of an ISIS fighter at al-Hol camp in al-Hasakeh governorate in northeastern Syria on February 17, 2019. (File photo: AFP)

Turkey launched an offensive into northeastern Syria against the Kurdish YPG militia last month following a decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw troops from the region. The move prompted widespread concern over the fate of ISIS prisoners in the region.

The YPG is the main element of the SDF, which has been a leading US ally in beating back ISIS in the region. It has kept thousands of extremists in jails across northeastern Syria.