Information Note on the Court’s case-law 237

February 2020

H.F. and M.F. v. France (communicated case) - 24384/19

Article 1

Jurisdiction of States

Responsibility of States

Jurisdiction and responsibility for repatriating nationals from the Middle East following the fall of “Islamic State”: communicated

Article 3

Degrading treatment

Inhuman treatment

Refusal to repatriate a national who left the country for the former territory of “Islamic State”, and her young children: communicated

Article 3 of Protocol No. 4

Article 3 para. 2 of Protocol No. 4

Enter own country

Refusal to repatriate a national who left the country for the former territory of “Islamic State”, and her young children: communicated

The applicants are the parents of a French national who left France in 2014, together with her partner, for the territory then controlled by the so-called Islamic State. She went on to have children there. The children and their mother – who is the subject of an arrest warrant in France for criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise – have apparently been detained since February 2019 in a camp in north-eastern Syria run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (a coalition of Kurdish militias and Arab fighters opposed to the government in Damascus).

The applicants applied without success to the French authorities, asking them to arrange by some means (France currently has no diplomatic relations with Syria) for their daughter and grandchildren to be brought back to France. They lodged an urgent application which was rejected on the grounds that the repatriation requested would entail negotiations with foreign authorities or intervention on foreign soil, and that such measures were indissociable from the conduct of France’s international relations, an area in which no court had jurisdiction.

France’s policy on this matter, as it emerges from various position statements, is motivated by, among other factors, a desire to first allow the authorities of the countries which have been victims of the above-mentioned organisation to rule on the criminal responsibility of its adult nationals, in the dual interests of security and non-interference.

Communicated under Article 3 of the Convention and Article 3 of Protocol No. 4, taken alone and in conjunction with Article 13 of the Convention. The questions put to the parties also concern, among other aspects, France’s jurisdiction and responsibility for the purposes of Article 1 of the Convention in this extraterritorial context, and the applicants’ standing to act on behalf of their daughter and her children as well as on their own behalf.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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