Jihadist attack in Switzerland: at trial, the accused who had tried to cut the throat of two women shows no remorse

The young woman, accused of having attempted to slaughter two women in a department store in 2020 in Switzerland by chanting her devotion to the Islamic State, expressed no remorse on Monday August 29 at the opening of her trial.

“

,” said the young woman, 29, before the federal criminal court in Bellinzona (south).

She said she had "

" an attack for "

" to "

" and show that she was also "

".

Read alsoAttacks: despite the lull, Islamism still threatens

On November 24, 2020, she attempted to slaughter two women in a department store in Lugano, an Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, after buying a knife there.

One of the two victims, who is attending the trial, had been seriously injured in the neck.

The second, injured in the hand, had managed to control the assailant with other people.

During the projection of a photo of a neck injury, the accused, of a Swiss father and a Serbian mother, remained calm.

"

," she observed, then repeating, "

."

Dressed in black, as stipulated by the court rules, she wore a long tunic, tights and ballerina shoes, as well as, at the start of the hearing, a sanitary mask (also black) and a hood covering her head and that she agreed to remove.

“

,” she said, a slight smile on her face, to justify her desire to keep the hood on, before bowing after a few minutes of discussion to the rules of the court.

Read alsoA young Swiss indicted for a knife attack with jihadist motivation

According to the indictment of the Public Prosecutor of the Confederation (MPC, Attorney General), the young woman, whose name the court does not want to be published, acted “

” and “

”.

During the attack, she repeatedly shouted "

" and "

", and declared "

", in reference to the jihadist group Islamic State.

On Monday, the young woman, with long black hair, recounted her epileptic seizures during childhood followed by an adolescence marked by anorexia, and hairdressing or sales assistant internships.

Very comfortable during her interrogation, she answered the court's questions at length, sometimes interrupting her answers with a kind of nervous laughter.

Prostitution

In contact with psychologists and psychiatrists since her childhood, she indicated that she is currently being followed in prison, where she is taking a treatment that she does not like and which makes her "

".

She explained that she became pregnant at 17 from her future husband, of Afghan origin, whom she married at 19 and from whom she ended up divorcing last year.

"

," she said, explaining that her husband didn't want her to study or have an abortion.

Not wishing to take care of the unborn child, she entrusted him to his parents, who adopted him.

She is on trial for "

" and violation of the article of federal law prohibiting the jihadist groups al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

In particular, she is accused of wanting to commit a "

" in the name of IS.

She must also answer the charge of "

" between 2017 and 2020.

Read alsoWomen repatriated from Syria: repentance before the judges but a rigorous Islam in detention

The defense assured that it would rely on his mental state to refute the “

” motive and plead an attempted homicide.

Experts are to be heard during the day and on Tuesday.

She was already known to the police before the attack, because she had tried to join a jihadist fighter in Syria, whom she had fallen in love with on the networks in 2017. She had been arrested at the Turkish-Syrian border and sent back to Switzerland then placed in a psychiatric institution.

The hearing is scheduled to last until Thursday, and judgment is expected on September 19.

Switzerland has never experienced a large-scale jihadist attack but two knife attacks in 2020: a few weeks before Lugano, a young Turkish-Swiss national, who had sought to travel to Syria in 2019, had fatally stabbed a passerby in a street in Morges (west).