Kurdish forces in Syria have captured one hundred French jihadis and the French government has said that the fighters will be not brought back to France and will stand trial in Syria.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that Kurdish forces had captured around 100 French Islamic extremists that had travelled to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State terror group. Le Drian ruled out returning the extremists to France saying, “They will be judged by the local judicial authorities,” franceinfo reports.
The fighters “will not be repatriated to France, as they are fighters, so they are enemies,” the Foreign Minister said and added, “They are people who have committed acts of barbarism, people who attacked the Kurds and the Iraqi forces. The conclusion of their actions is that they are judged by those who they fought.”
Le Drian said that the children of French extremists would be brought back to France and that the government was working alongside the Red Cross to identify and repatriate them.
A number of foreign fighters have been captured in Syria and Iraq in recent months as the so-called caliphate of the Islamic State has withered away. One of the most widely publicised cases involved a 16-year-old German girl named Linda Wenzel who was captured last year.
Wenzel had travelled from Germany to Iraq to marry an Islamic State fighter and many feared that she would be found guilty of terror offences and executed by the Iraqi government.
Earlier this year, a German female jihadi was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court. The unnamed German woman of Moroccan origin joined the Islamic State along with her two daughters who married the group’s militants.
Court spokesman Abdel Settar Bayraqdar claimed the woman had provided “logistical support and helping the terrorist group to carry out crimes.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.