The parents of 10 children who require consular assistance and travel documents for their repatriation from Syria to Belgium will appeal the decision of the Brussels Court’s President, their lawyers Abderrahim Lahlali and Mohamed Ozdemir told Belga on Monday.
This court action only covers the section of the judgment which states that the parents themselves are not part of the repatriation.
On 11 December, a Brussels’ Judge ruled that the Belgian State had to provide these 10 children with consular assistance, and administrative, travel and identification documents in view of their repatriation. The latter must be done within six weeks, or the State would face a penalty of €5,000 per day of delay and per child in the execution of the decision, the judgement stated.
The children are those of the fighters Nadia Baghouri, Jessie Van Eetvelde, and Sabah Hammani and Islamic State terrorist Adel Mezroui. The women and their 10 children are currently in the Al-Hol refugee camp, outside of the area currently occupied by the Turks in Syria. As for Mezroui, he is detained in the Kurdish prison Al-Hasakah, without medical assistance.
The State has decided not to appeal, Foreign Minister Philippe Goffin announced last Wednesday.
“However, the government is not clear on the steps of the repatriation process,” Lahlali said on Monday. "The Minister‘s ambiguous communication has pushed us to appeal. In addition, the application of the judge’s decision would lead de facto to the separation of the children from their parents, which goes against the Convention on Children’s Rights."
The appeal was registered on Monday, but no agenda for the treatment of the case has yet been established.
The Brussels Times
