Published On 4/7/2026
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Last update: 16:48 (Mecca time)
A French lawyer filed an appeal against an administrative decision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris that refuses to return two French girls detained in the “Roj” camp in northeastern Syria, after the death of their mother last April.
According to the text of the appeal, the two minors (10 and 12 years old), the eldest of whom was born in France, have been present since December 2018 in the Roj camp, where relatives of people suspected of belonging to ISIS are detained.
Lawyer Marie Douzet said, as reported by Agence France-Presse, that the two girls remained with their mother until her death three months ago, noting that they were suffering from a “state of extreme weakness.” She explained that she had submitted requests to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to return these two girls, but she had not received a response, and that the appeal submitted was related to an implicit decision to refuse.
The appeal submitted this week stated that “the absence of a response constitutes in practice the absence of a justification for the refusal decision, and a violation of a ruling issued by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in 2022.”
The lawyer said, “The problem is that France has always returned orphans, even in 2019 when it refused any return,” and pointed to “repatriations of mothers and children of other nationalities that have taken place since the death of this woman,” referring to the Turkish, Indonesian, and Australian nationalities.
It touched on a change that occurred after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
The lawyer added, “We are no longer in a geopolitical situation in which everything is in the hands of the Kurds and in a region outside the law. There are currently existing diplomatic relations with Syria.”
According to data issued by the French Anti-Terrorism Prosecution, 1,490 people from France, including 417 adult women, have left for the Iraqi-Syrian region to join jihadist groups since 2012.
395 adults returned to France, including 176 women, and 361 minors, including 325 who are still minors and 36 who have become adults, according to Agence France-Presse.
The most recent repatriation occurred in mid-September 2025 and included ten children and three women.
Hell camps
During a session of the UN Security Council on June 24, Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ibrahim Olabi, called for action to end the issue of detainees in camps in northeastern Syria, calling on countries to repatriate their citizens.
He described the “Al-Hawl” and “Roj” camps as “hell camps,” noting that thousands of children and women of multiple nationalities live there in tragic conditions and “have been deprived of health care and education for more than seven years.”
The “Roj” camp, located in the countryside of Hasakah Governorate, houses about 2,300 children and women who belong to about 50 countries, and are believed to be families of former fighters in the “ISIS” organization, which was defeated in the battles of 2019.
Al-Hawl camp, located in the south of Al-Hasakah Governorate, housed thousands of similar families from more than 40 countries, before it witnessed widespread escape and smuggling operations during the military confrontations that took place in the northeastern regions of the country at the beginning of this year between the Syrian government and the SDF.
