Hundreds of children repatriated from Syria to France are 'doing well'

France's anti-terrorism prosecutor says that 364 repatriated children of French parents suspected of joining the Islamic State armed group in Syria and Iraq a decade ago are "doing well".

"There are 364 children in 59 departments who are followed by judges for children and benefit from coordination from my office to ensure they receive optimal care," prosecutor Olivier Christen told FranceInfo radio on Wednesday.

In 2018, another anti-terror prosecutor had expressed concern that the children of French nationals who joined IS after its 2014 so-called caliphate could be “ticking time bombs”

Christen – who leads the National Anti-Terror Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT), opened in 2019 following a series of jihadist attacks – dismissed that fear.

"These 364 children in no way seem to me to correspond to that expression," he said.

"They are being closely monitored ... They pose no particular difficulty."

He noted that their situations varied greatly: “Some are very, very young children, others are fully fledged teenagers.”

Since the collapse of IS’s territorial control in 2019, 170 women have returned to France from Iraq and Syria, including 57 from detention camps in northeast Syria.

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