She Left France to Fight in Syria. Now She Wants to Return. But Can She?
- 6 years ago
She Left France to Fight in Syria. Now She Wants to Return. But Can She?
that A Kurdish state does not exist, and French citizens cannot be judged by the Kurds,
French law enforcement officials estimate that about 690 French foreign fighters are still in Syria and
that about 43 percent — 295 — are women, the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said in an interview in November on FranceInfo.
A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish Defense Forces, Mustafa Bali, said his leadership urged "all countries, European or other, to extradite their women
and children." But many European countries appear hesitant.
Among the jihadists from France who went to fight in Iraq and Syria in 2015, nearly a third were women — a larger proportion than any other European country at the time, according to intelligence experts and French intelligence documents
that are not public but were shared with the French news media.
Yet the quandary her case poses is an increasingly common one for France
and other European countries: What should they do when citizens who are former Islamic State fighters or supporters want to return?
She appears to have made the decision to go to Syria on her own rather than following a husband or boyfriend there, said
Agnès de Féo, a sociologist who filmed Ms. König in 2012 for the documentary about French women who wore the full veil.
that A Kurdish state does not exist, and French citizens cannot be judged by the Kurds,
French law enforcement officials estimate that about 690 French foreign fighters are still in Syria and
that about 43 percent — 295 — are women, the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said in an interview in November on FranceInfo.
A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish Defense Forces, Mustafa Bali, said his leadership urged "all countries, European or other, to extradite their women
and children." But many European countries appear hesitant.
Among the jihadists from France who went to fight in Iraq and Syria in 2015, nearly a third were women — a larger proportion than any other European country at the time, according to intelligence experts and French intelligence documents
that are not public but were shared with the French news media.
Yet the quandary her case poses is an increasingly common one for France
and other European countries: What should they do when citizens who are former Islamic State fighters or supporters want to return?
She appears to have made the decision to go to Syria on her own rather than following a husband or boyfriend there, said
Agnès de Féo, a sociologist who filmed Ms. König in 2012 for the documentary about French women who wore the full veil.