Before the organized return “in the night from Monday to Tuesday” of these 35 minors and 16 women, there were “120 women and nearly 290 children” French detained in the camps in northeastern Syria controlled by the Kurds, declared Wednesday on RMC radio Laurent Nunez, coordinator of intelligence and the fight against terrorism.
“Whenever we can, we will carry out repatriation operations for humanitarian and increasingly secure reasons, which was also taken into account during the last operation, because the area is increasingly unstable”, Mr. Nunez added.
“There are threats perhaps of Turkish operations, the EI (Islamic State group) which is reconstituting itself in the Syrian desert and plans to go and free these women and children”, he detailed.
“For the safety of our fellow citizens, perhaps it is better to have (these women and children) more under control than to see them in an area where they can enjoy themselves in nature”, added Mr. Nunez .
He recalled that “320 adults and 150 children” from Syria and Iraq had been handed over “in recent years” to the French authorities by Turkey, where they had been arrested.
Finally, although the terrorist threat is essentially “endogenous”, the coordinator of intelligence and the fight against terrorism called for “not to neglect” that “projected” from the outside.
“The EI always has inclinations, we see that it is being reconstituted, we know that certain jihadists who were in the area have returned to their country, to the Maghreb or the Balkans, without necessarily being prosecuted, that continues to constitute for us threats,” he added.
