The parents of the two women went to the European Court in Strasbourg after France refused to allow their daughters and grandchildren to return to France.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled today that France should review the repatriation requests of two French women who had traveled to Syria with their partners to join Islamic State, and the children they gave birth to there.
The court ruled that France’s refusal to repatriate the women and children violated their rights “to enter the territory of the country of which one is a national”.
The parents of the two women went to the European Court in Strasbourg after France refused to allow their daughters and grandchildren to return to France.
They are currently being held in camps in northeastern Syria under Kurdish control.
The families had claimed that their prolonged detention in Syria exposed their wives and children to inhuman and degrading treatment and violated their right to respect for family life.
France has for years resisted calls by human rights groups to repatriate the women on the grounds that it considers them “combatants” who should be tried where they are accused of committing crimes.
The court ruled that France should not be held responsible for the living conditions in the Syrian camps as “it is not within its jurisdiction”.
Nicolas Hervier, a jurist at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, said the ruling does not generally grant the right to repatriation as “France is not responsible for their life and physical integrity per se”.
Responding to the ruling, government spokesman Olivier Veran said France “did not wait for the European court’s decision” to proceed, pointing to the July 16 repatriation of 16 women and 35 children, some of them orphans, on chartered flights.
This move did not follow France’s policy of repatriating children, on a case-by-case basis, to France without their mothers.
Aid groups say around 75 French women and 160 children remain in the camps. They are among more than 40,000 foreign nationals — most Iraqis — according to Human Rights Watch.
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