Three French extremists and their nine children returned to France on Tuesday after being expelled by Turkey, AFP reported, citing a legal source, a day after France took back 12 orphaned children of French extremists from camps in northern Syria.
The three adults, a 35-year-old man and two women, one aged 36, were taken into custody by the French authorities, and the children were placed under the protection of the state.
Reuters reported, citing a judicial source, that the three adults and nine children are a family — a man, his two wives and their nine children — adding that they had been initially arrested in Turkey after traveling to that country from Syria.
Al-Arabiya reported that earlier this week 12 French and two Dutch orphans of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists were repatriated to France from Syria.
Authorities in northeast Syria have been urging Western countries to take back citizens who joined ISIL and their relatives after the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured the group’s last enclave this year.