Two French school students who ran away to fight in Syria were back home today with some explaining to do to their bewildered parents and teachers and the police.
The two boys, aged 15 and 16, flew to Turkey on January 6 with the apparent intention of crossing the border into Syria and performing "jihad" or holy war alongside the thousands of foreign fighters who have joined rebels battling Bashar al-Assad's government forces.
The younger of the two succeeded in crossing the border but neither boy reached the front line, to the relief of anxious friends and family in Toulouse, where they were both pupils at the Arenes Lycee, or high school.
The 16-year-old arrived home on Sunday while the 15-year-old, whose repatriation was delayed by complications linked to his entering Syria, got back today.
The latter's father appealed to journalists to leave the family alone. "We need to rest, these are very difficult moments for us," he said.
The pair face interrogation from police about how they came to be sufficiently radicalised to embark on such an adventure and the contacts they must have made in order to believe it was possible.
According to Interior Minister Manuel Valls, as many as 700 French nationals could have joined the fighting in Syria, with perhaps one fifth of the total accounted for by converts to Islam.
Valls has described these radicals as a ticking time bomb whose eventual return to France will present the country with a major security challenge in years to come.
The case of the 15-year-old has been most surprising for his parents and teachers. Brought up in a devout Muslim family, he had never shown any sign of radicalism and had no history of trouble at school or with the police.
The other boy was known to the police in connection with minor offences and comes from a family which includes several Islamist hardliners. He is suspected of having perhaps influenced his younger friend.
Police sources said investigators did not think the two boys necessarily came under the influence of an Islamist network and, as a result, they would be seeking to establish how exactly they got to the point of flying off to Turkey.
