Three Frenchmen held in Iraq, forced to work for the Islamic State group as children, are seeking repatriation on the grounds they were victims of war, their lawyers said Friday.
International humanitarian law prohibits the recruitment and use of children in hostilities.
The men — taken to Syria by their jihadist parents aged 11 or 12 then made to take part in propaganda videos, fight or join IS police — have filed legal documents in France claiming they were the victim of a war crime over their recruitment, a source with knowledge of the case told AFP.
The three detainees are part of 5,700 suspected IS “fighters” of 61 nationalities transferred from Syria to neighbouring Iraq earlier this year.
France is investigating them for alleged “terrorist” crimes while in Syria.
But according to their lawyers arguing for their repatriation, the French judicial system should instead be considering them as “war victims”.
“No child chooses to be enlisted, and France is displaying the worst kind of indignity in this matter, while also violating the conventions to which it is a signatory,” attorneys Marie Dose and Matthieu Bagard said in a joint statement.
“Instead of treating them as the victims they are, France refused to repatriate them from Syria and made possible their transfer to a squalid Iraqi prison where they are subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment,” they added.
Hundreds of French men and women joined the ranks of IS after the jihadist group seized large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, implementing their brutal interpretation of Islamic law in a so-called “caliphate”.
Backed by US-led forces, Iraq proclaimed the defeat of IS in the country in 2017.
Kurdish-led Syrian fighters ultimately beat back the group in Syria two years later, detaining thousands of alleged IS fighters as well as their family members.
Syrian Kurdish authorities have long urged the international community to repatriate their nationals, but Western nations have been very reluctant and only brought some home on a case-by-case basis.
The United States transferred “5,700 adult male ISIS fighters” to Iraqi custody in February after Syrian troops drove Kurdish forces from swathes of northern Syria, sparking questions over the fate of the IS prisoners.
