PARIS: France on Tuesday repatriated three women and 10 children from Syrian prisons for alleged militants, anti-terror prosecutors said, in the first such operation in two years.
Repatriation is a deeply sensitive issue in France, which has been a target of Islamists over the last decade, notably in 2015, when militant gunmen and suicide bombers staged the worst attack on Paris since World War II, killing 130 people.
More than five years after the Daesh group’s territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria, tens of thousands of people are still held in Kurdish-run camps and prisons in northeastern Syria, many with alleged or perceived links to Daesh.
The women repatriated early Tuesday morning are aged between 18 and 34.
Two of them have been taken into police custody, while the third faces possible indictment, according to France’s anti-terror unit PNAT.
