ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has rebuffed calls for Islamic State (ISIS) members to face justice in their home countries, saying they should be tried for their crimes in Syria but only at a point when the military situation is “clear.”
“This area is still a war zone,” he told Franceinfo on Friday. “Around the Kurdish forces, you have Turkish forces, Russian forces, Syrian forces, you have everyone in this small space,” he said, noting “armed clashes” taking place in camps holding thousands of families with suspected ties to ISIS.
"Our position is clear: the perpetrators of these crimes should be tried on-site when the military situation is made clear, which is not [currently] the case."
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday slammed states for failing to repatriate their nationals held in “inhuman or degrading conditions” in northeast Syria, noting France has refused to repatriate a woman with advanced colon cancer from squalid camps.
“The foreign detainees have never been brought before a court, making their detention arbitrary as well as indefinite,” HRW said.
“Men, women, and children from around the world are entering a third year of unlawful detention in life-threatening conditions in northeast Syria while their governments look the other way,” said Letta Tayler, the organisation’s associate crisis and conflict director. “Governments should be helping to fairly prosecute detainees suspected of serious crimes and free everyone else, not helping to create another Guantanamo.”
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The French Foreign Minister said Paris is focusing on bringing back French children from the camps.
“In the current situation, our priority is to save the children,” said Le Drian, adding that only those under 10 who are orphans or given permission to return to France by their mothers will be repatriated.
France has so far repatriated children on a case-by-case basis.
Kurdish authorities have reiterated the need for governments to do more, saying current repatriation efforts are “insufficient” and calling for international assistance in putting ISIS suspects on trial.
Calls on the government to repatriate children by French politicians have intensified. A French delegation visited northeast Syria in February, with some members then addressing the European Parliament earlier this month.
The case for French children and their mothers to be brought back from northeast Syria is to be heard by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, it said on Monday.
Calls to bring home children in ISIS-linked families have grown as Kurdish-run camps become increasingly dangerous.
In al-Hol camp, 43 people have been murdered so far this year, the Rojava Information Centre told Rudaw English on Monday, including a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff member and a number of Iraqi refugees. Kurdish forces have arrested a number of people over the murders, which they attributed to ISIS sleeper cells in the camp.
Fifteen people have been killed this month alone, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Coordination and Military Operations Center said on Wednesday.
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