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Detained after fleeing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL also known as ISIS) Two French women say they are ready to go home, if they are judged fairly.
Behind the fence of a camp on Kurdish-held territory in Syria, detainees wore a long black veil that only showed their eyes and was accompanied by three children.
They were closely watched by Kurdish fighters.
About 500 foreign women have been trucked into Al-Hol camp over the last few months, after being recovered by US-backed forces near villages that they abducted one to one to the jihadists.
From the beginning, the French women warned AFP not to give any personal information to protect their family.
But the most talkative, a 29-year-old from the Lyon region of France, had a message to convey.
"We are not animals, we are human beings … we have a heart, we have a soul," she says, her blue eyes looking forward.
Kurdish-led forces have now surrounded the remaining ISIL fighters within half a kilometer of territory in Baghouz village, and claim that their only choice is to surrender.
"We have not been in agreement"
France is reluctant to bring back women suspected of belonging to ISIL and their children.
Their repatriation is a sensitive subject in a country that has suffered a series of deadly attacks claimed by ISIL since 2015.
And the French authorities are even more suspicious of the men and women who stayed with ISIL until the end.
The second woman, aged about thirty, said her husband and three children had fled the latest ISIL attack earlier this month.
"We did not agree" with the ISIL fighters, she said, with a slight accent from the south of France.
"But we could not say anything."
His companion insisted "the IS [ISIL] the fighters scared us. They said: "They will cut your throat, they will rape you."
After weeks of shelling and food shortages as Syrian defense forces settled in, she said she paid $ 50 to a smuggler so her two young boys could escape.
Now, both women say they are ready to go home.
But the 29-year-old has conditions: to be able to practice Islam as she hears and to stay close to the children she's left behind.
She tells how she lost two children aged two and six, under the bombing, a few years ago.
But she says she does not want revenge.
"I had my children killed.It's not tomorrow that I'm going to kill someone," she said.
"They will tear our children apart"
The two women claim to have led a peaceful life under ISIL and that their husbands had held civilian jobs, but it was not immediately possible to check their accounts.
They say they were disappointed by the reality of living in the "caliphate" proclaimed by ISIL in vast expanses of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014.
The group "executed many people for nothing, without evidence, even Muslims," said the young woman, claiming that her husband had been killed.
But they do not condemn the lethal attacks of ISIL against the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall in France in 2015.
"The people who did this wanted to avenge" French air strikes in Syria, said a woman from the Lyon region.
Already, she says the two men fear what could happen to their young boys as they return to France and are arrested.
"They will pull our children away, place them in homes and host families," she said.
"They will be separated from each other and grow up (with values) against the education we want to give them," she insisted.
"There are many things in France against our religion, homobaduality for example".
Both hope that if they are judged, they serve short sentences.
"I hope we will be judged fairly on a case-by-case basis – not for all that the group has done," said the most talkative woman.
The older woman said that she would like a short and editable prison term to be able to see her children.
"They are all that I have," she said after her husband's detention.
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