A “black hole” called a caliphate

The landing of the two Spanish jihadists in national territory has opened a tortuous judicial labyrinth that can last for months.

A few hours after entering Spain, the two women who lived in the caliphate of the Islamic State (ISIS, in its acronym in English) gave a statement to the Police to later go to the National Court.

That same day they entered pretrial detention where they will possibly remain until the trial is held.

A trial that confronts them, as requested by the Prosecutor's Office, for the crime of belonging to a terrorist organization.

“There is no reasonable basis,” José Luis Laso, the lawyer for the investigated Yolanda Martínez and Luna Fernández, insists by phone, because he says that women cannot be convicted for having simply been “housewives” in Syria.

Anyone would raise their eyebrows when watching two women covered from head to toe, defending the law of Allah on earth, captured in the most radical trench of ISIS, denying their criminal involvement.

But the public accusation, as has happened in other European courts, is going to have to overcome some obstacles to incriminate the Spanish women who returned from the caliphate.

“We are facing a black hole of evidence,” the CGI inspector – the National Police General Information Commissioner – explained to me in 2019, who was preparing the report on the accusation at that time.

He was referring to the fact that the impassable borders of the jihadist domains in Syria and Iraq have hosted one of the darkest periods in history.

The bombings, the internet blackout, the absence of journalists or the secrecy among the followers have devastated any type of information or evidence.

And that is why there is no trace, file, census or document of what the foreign members have done in their time with ISIS.

In other countries, such as Germany, judges have used the few fragments that surfaced, such as the proselytizing that these women disseminated on social networks or their WhatsApp conversations, to issue a decision.

For example, the message that the German Romiena Scheer sent to her mother about her attendance with her daughter at a stoning, or the comments she posted on Twitter supporting the attack in Nice, were later used by a court to accuse her of membership in a terrorist organization.

However, in recent years, no similar evidence has been discovered on the journey of the Spanish women.

When I interviewed Yolanda Martínez in the prisoner camps in Syria, she told me that she had gone into the conflict deceived by her husband and that she had simply spent her days taking care of a large offspring: "I have spent these five and a half years with my family, with my four children, whom I love a lot, but we have not done anything illegal”.

It may be hard to believe the innocence of these women, who after all participated for years in a radical environment.

But it is not clear that their mere presence in the caliphate can prosecute them as terrorists, but rather that this allows them to be presented as victims of their own husbands.

It is precisely the CGI that has worked over the last four years to demonstrate, for the first time in the proceedings of the judicial police, that the woman in the jihad "is an active member of the organization", and that, although "they are women, their functions are not they were only those of the upbringing ”, they say in the department.

But what functions do they refer to?

Have they been able to prove it with evidence?

Or does the general notion of women promoted by the organization serve to establish individual guilt?

“We demonstrate it based on other French women who have returned from the conflict”, comments another inspector, “it is about establishing a parallelism”.

The Police do keep concrete evidence, which they consider conclusive, to prove the crime of integration.

A farewell letter that Yolanda left at her home in Morocco hours before leaving for the jihad.

According to the transcript reflected in the judgment of the National Court 25/2016, the letter said that "in the face of the Syrian conflict, we must not remain static and take action."

No further content has been revealed about the letter but, as revealed, the defense could argue that Yolanda does not confess allegiance to any group, because the woman from Madrid also crossed the Syrian border a month before the establishment of the self-styled caliphate.

To delve into the criminal acts themselves, the Police have had to rescue the investigations of a previous case: the Al Ándalus Brigade (2012-2014), a cell that sent fighters to Syria for which the spouses of Yolanda and Luna played a role. fundamental role, but for which none of the women were charged at the time.

“It is because the role of women was not interpreted before as it is interpreted now”, says the researcher.

And for this they have resumed wiretapping and surveillance reports to reanalyze, ten years later, the level of indoctrination and radicalization of those past meetings between Luna and Yolanda.

Pilar Cebrián

is a journalist specializing in the Middle East and author of

(Ariel).

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