(AFP) After years of waiting for his son to come home from Syria, Jacques Le Brun is cautiously hoping that day may be nearing — along with the chance to meet three grandchildren who have never seen France.
“He’ll certainly go to prison, and he knows that. He probably even deserves it a little,” Le Brun says at the family home in Labastide-Rouairoux, a village tucked in a forested valley of southern France.
The important thing, he says, is that Quentin makes it home alive after taking his wife and infant daughter in 2014 to join the Islamic State group in Syria — where he later appeared in a chilling IS propaganda video burning his passport.
About six weeks ago Le Brun learned that his son, now 30, was stranded near the Euphrates river in the last pocket of IS-held territory, besieged by Kurdish forces and targeted by coalition airstrikes.
