Court Quashes Mum's Bid to Sue France for Letting Son Join Jihad

A French court on Tuesday threw out a case brought by a mother trying to sue the government for failing to stop her teenage son from leaving to join jihadists in Syria.

The boy was 16 when he left with three others from the town of Nice in southern France in December 2013, taking a plane to Turkey and then traveling overland to Syria. 

His mother argued airport police in Nice should have stopped the boy because he had only a one-way ticket and no baggage. 

But the court ruled that the airport officers had no case to answer and turned down a demand for 110,000 euros ($125,000) in compensation. 

The mother said Turkey was known as an entry point to Syria, but the court found that "these circumstances are not enough to demonstrate the police service was at fault."

The boy, who was not on any police watchlist nor barred from leaving France, "fulfilled the legal conditions to leave the territory for the destination of Turkey," the court added. 

Since January 2013, parents have been able to apply to stop their children leaving the country if they are minors, which the mother did not do.

France has confiscated the passports and identity cards of 60 people under new counter-terrorism powers approved earlier this year to stop people joining jihadist groups abroad, with another 50 cases under consideration. 

An estimated 113 French citizens or residents of France have died after joining jihadist groups in the Middle East, the government said earlier this month. 

There are 130 ongoing legal cases related to jihadist activities, concerning 650 people. 

The government has also set up a hotline for family and friends that they can use to notify the authorities about potential jihadist recruits. It says a quarter of the 1,864 alerts have been about minors.