The Court of Cassation on Tuesday ordered a new trial for the mother of a jihadist on suspicion of helping her son's exit from the territory, but it upheld her conviction for terrorist financing.
Nathalie Haddadi was sentenced to two years' imprisonment by the Paris Criminal Court in September 2017, for having sent money to her son, Belabbas Bounaga, and having helped him to leave when he was targeted by a ban on leaving the country.
After several dismissals, she was sentenced on appeal in March 2021, seeing her sentence reduced to one year of suspended imprisonment.
She had lodged an appeal in cassation.
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Tuesday, the highest court of the judiciary partially overturned the decision of the court of appeal, concerning the prosecution for "
complicity in leaving French territory in violation of an exit ban
".
In its decision, the Court of Appeal had indeed held that Nathalie Haddadi had admitted having hidden the passports of her son and other members of the family, a month and a half before the notification of the ban on leaving the territory, which she had attended.
Money to "heal" and "help" to "eat"
The Court of Appeal considered that, if there was a "
doubt
" as to the fact that she had paid for her son's plane ticket to Algeria and that she had accompanied him to the airport in Frankfurt, she had "
deliberately lied to the police
."
The Court of Cassation considered that the court had not, on this point, "
characterized the materiality
" of the assistance provided by Nathalie Haddadi, ordering a third trial which will relate only to this offense and to the overall quantum of the penalty. .
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The 40-year-old is therefore definitively convicted of terrorist financing, in particular for having sent some 2,800 euros to her son while he was in Malaysia.
From Malaysia, Belabbas Bounaga ended up joining the Islamic State (IS) organization in Syria.
Radicalized in prison, the Franco-Algerian is presumed dead in the Iraqi-Syrian zone in August 2016, at the age of 21.
Nathalie Haddadi had explained to the court in 2017 to have reported, in vain, the radicalization of her delinquent son in prison, and assured to have sent him to his father in November 2015 in Algeria to "
save him
" then to have sent him money. in Malaysia in order to "
help
" "
eat
" and "
heal
".
