A 31-year-old Swede who joined the Islamic State (IS) organization in Syria was sentenced Monday, March 8 to three years in prison for taking her son, in the first conviction of a "
ghost
" by the Nordic country.
Read also: In Iraq, the Islamic State prepares its reconquest
The young woman, who arrived in Syria via Turkey in the summer of 2014, was sentenced for "
arbitrary treatment of a child
" against her two-year-old son at the time, according to the judgment obtained by AFP.
After her arrest by the Kurdish forces in early 2018 and then a long detention in the prison camps, the accused managed to escape to Turkey in the spring of 2020. She was deported to Sweden in November, with her son and two other children born from marriage to an IS fighter.
The court in Lund (south) ruled that the accused could not ignore at the time that she was joining a war zone controlled by the jihadist organization, which had just proclaimed a caliphate on its territories controlled in Syria and Iraq.
Separated from the father of the child, civil party in this case, the young mother had obtained her agreement for the trip by saying that she wanted to take a vacation in Turkey.
She says she only wanted to spend a few days in Syria but the court considered that it was established by the prosecutor that she wanted to settle there.
The young woman will appeal, announced her lawyer to the Swedish agency TT.
About 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of whom are women, joined the ranks of jihadist organizations in the Levant, mainly between 2013 and 2014, according to information declassified by the intelligence services.
"
About half of them, nearly 150, have returned,
" said Magnus Ranstorp, Swedish expert on jihadism at the Higher School of Defense.
Read also: Return from Syria: the burning dilemma of women and children
Due to the absence of Swedish legislation at the time of the facts allowing the prosecution of "
ghosts
" for association with a terrorist organization, prosecutions have remained rare in Sweden, unlike most European countries, he explained to AFP.
Two Swedes were sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2015 thanks to videos showing their participation in beheadings.
Other "
ghosts
" have been convicted but for crimes and misdemeanors in Sweden, according to local media.