“I am very tired”, blows the young brunette with a gray complexion from the box facing the judge of freedoms and detention (JLD).
Hardly had she set foot on French soil after returning from a camp in northeastern Syria, the jihadist Émilie König, 37, was indicted by an anti-terrorism judge and placed in pre-trial detention.
This Breton, originally from Morbihan, left France in 2012 to join the ranks of Daesh.
Considered an Islamic State recruiter and one of the most wanted terrorists by the United States since 2015, she is placed by the UN on its blacklist of the most dangerous fighters and the CIA designates her as a target priority.
For its part, France has been looking for it since 2015 as part of a survey linked to the so-called “Nîmes” sector (Gard).
Émilie König grew up in Lorient with her three brothers and sisters.
Their father leaves the family, it is their mother who raises them alone.
At 19, she met a man of Algerian origin and converted to Islam for love.
Two children were born from this union.
When her companion was imprisoned for drug trafficking at the end of the 2000s, Émilie König began her radicalization by evolving in the sphere of the Nantes Islamist group Forsane Alizza: the full veil was adopted and she was seen distributing jihadist propaganda leaflets in the street.
A recruiter filmed with a sawed-off weapon
In 2012, the young woman abandoned her children to her mother and flew to Syria to join Al-Qaeda.
It will eventually integrate the terrorist organization Islamic State.
Twice married to combatants, twice widowed, Émilie König gives birth to a boy and twin girls in this war zone.
In Raqqa where she is based, the Lorientaise is suspected of having shot propaganda videos.
From 2013, she posted a video on YouTube in which she expressed her love to her children who remained in Lorient.
In another video, she appears fully veiled, practicing shooting with a sawed-off shotgun.
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But above all, she would have become a recruiter: on the Internet, she contacts radicalized young women to convince them to come and fight in Syria.
She also encourages them to commit attacks against the wives of French soldiers.
2017 is the fall of the Islamic State, Émilie König is captured by the Kurds and placed with her three children in a camp.
In a video posted in 2018, she explains that "there is no hatred" in this Kurdish camp.
Émilie König describes part of her daily life, far from being hellish, according to her: she explains that she can smoke, that we bring her tea, coffee, "everything we need when we want".
The young woman explains that she has her own tent, cooking accessories, mattresses, blankets.
"We lacked nothing, it's quite the opposite," she said, saying that doctors also take care of (the prisoners).
Emilie König in March 2021 in the Kurdish camp where she has been detained since 2017. (AFP/Delil Souleiman) AFP or licensors
After four years, her three children are repatriated to France in early 2021: she says she wants her eldest to be able to return to CP.
Then, in the spring of the same year, she told AFP from her Roj camp that she wanted to "return to France".
“Finding her life as a woman”
It's done.
Indicted for "criminal terrorist association", the jihadist would "intend to cooperate fully with French justice", indicates her lawyer Emmanuel Daoud.
“She returned to explain herself and to try as quickly as possible, according to a deadline that she does not control, to see her children again”, adds her advice.
Now aged 15 and 17, her two children have been placed in foster care due to their grandmother's health issues.
To the judges, Émilie König said she wanted to "regain her life as a woman".
Especially since, according to her mother who confided in Ouest-France, the young woman “must have a second chance” because “she has returned to her normal state (…) She has deradicalized herself ".
The 71-year-old mother, who has not seen her daughter for ten years, says she is a “support” for her daughter, even if she “cannot do anything”.
“Coming back, judge the mother, she will be condemned and it is normal that she pays her debt”.
