A 28-year-old French woman was sentenced Thursday in Paris to seven years in prison for "terrorist criminal association", for having reached Syria in 2014 and having lived there for more than six years within jihadist groups.
The youngest of siblings born to Senegalese parents, Oumou S. grew up in the town of Les Mureaux (Yvelines), near Paris.
Her Muslim family is not very religious, unlike her.
At 19, the BTS student buried some clothes in a garbage bag and flew clandestinely to Syria.
She will be imprisoned in France in April 2021 upon her return from Syria via Turkey.
“I was lacking in reference points, psychological and social stability
,” she explained to the criminal court, red and black dress, and very short hair.
"Hungry for freedom"
She says she insisted on accompanying Damien Omet, targeted today by a European and international arrest warrant.
“We were two poor kids feeling bad about themselves”
, she says to explain her departure with the one she had only seen physically
“two or three times only”.
He will become
"a combatant invested"
, in particular in the armed group of Jaysh Mohamed, close to the Al-Nusra Front then allied with Al-Qaeda.
She claims to have been confined to household chores before having two children in 2016 and 2018, of which she is today without news.
They would still be in Idlib,
"perhaps buried"
, after Monday's earthquake, she said in a rare moment of emotion where her anger and tears broke through.
"I was never interested in the question of jihad", but "I was eager for freedom"
, she says to explain her flight both from her family, described as unloving, and from the katiba of Oumar Diaby's group. (alias Omar Omsen), whom she had joined as soon as she arrived in Syria.
She describes this former Franco-Senegalese delinquent - suspected of having convinced many French people to join armed jihad - as
"the village madman"
,
"a
lustful manipulator" abusing women.
While she claims to have wanted to leave the "despicable men"
very quickly
of this group, she will only contact the French consular authorities in 2020 after being arrested, she says, during a search without her children to cross the border with Turkey.
Read alsoThe State is accelerating repatriations from Syria
"Her departure questions her true motivation and her stakes"
and she
"could not ignore the criminal activities of these jihadist groups"
, said the court in rendering its decision which also includes a three-year socio-judicial follow-up.
However, he underlined
“his good behavior in detention”
and
“his fairly reassuring positive development”.
"The life of this eternally misunderstood, without ties or anyone to support her, is just a headlong rush,"
pleaded her lawyer Louis Heloun, who sees as
"a glimmer of hope"
the fact that the court does not did not retain the two-thirds security sentence requested by the prosecutor who had also requested eight years in prison.
