Heavy penalties required against figures of "female jihad"

Despite appearances, they were well five this Thursday in the box of the accused. Ines Madani, Ornella Gilligmann and Mohamed Lamine Aberouz have spent the entire audience headlong. Hidden behind the wooden fence on which is fixed an imposing window, it would have been almost possible to believe that these three had managed to escape from the special court of assizes before which they have been judged for 14 days. Only the presence of the gendarmes behind them betrayed their presence. Sarah Hervouet and Samia Chalel, they have watched the attorneys general require, for more than four hours, heavy sentences against those who had "become
the face of the feminine jihad "," the armed arm "of Daesh.

Ines Madani

The young woman, aged in 2016, 19 years, was passed on the Internet for Abu Omar, a jihadist returned from Syria to commit an attack in France. The latter then explained that his sister (Ines Madani, herself) was going to make contact with his targets. She thus came into contact with women who "seduced by this man" fell "in love", said the general lawyer, Jean-Michel Bourles. With one of them, Ornella Gilligmann, she tried to blow up a car filled with gas cylinders near Notre-Dame de Paris. After this failure, she will "mobilize her network of women" to prepare a new attack in Boussy-Saint-Georges, in Essonne.

At the time, "only the will to kill disbelievers mattered to him," says the general counsel. The public prosecutor's office has been sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment with a 22-year lock-in period. "The only element" that led magistrates not to ask for life is his "age at the time of the facts," said the other advocate general, Jean-Michel Bourles. "I can not have no hope in the human being," he said. Ines Madani must "know that the society believes that it is able to evolve".

"These are requisitions that appear totally excessive," said his lawyer to the press after the hearing. "It may require 30 years against a girl of 19 years who has no criminal record and who has no blood on the hands, me that goes out of my mind," said Laurent Pasquet-Marinacce.

Ornella Gilligman

Although married, this mother of three had fallen in love with Abu Omar, met on Periscope. A "prince charming", "who told him what she wanted to hear," with whom she had "erotic conversations not to say pornographic," says Jean-Michel Bourles. But they both shared "their vision of Islam, their admiration of the Islamic State."

He asked her to help him commit a violent action on the territory. The young woman then bought bottles of gas with Ines Madani and tried to blow them up in front of a bar on the left bank. She defends herself by explaining that she managed to defeat the attack she did not want to commit. This version did not convince the advocates-general who sought a 25-year prison sentence with a two-thirds security period.

Amel Sakaou

Throughout the trial, she refused to be brought to court for trial. "It shows us that it is still completely locked in this ideology," said the general lawyer who has requested a sentence of 20 years in prison with a two-thirds safety period against the mother of four, aged 42. years. If she had come "to explain herself to the justice of men, the penalty required would have been lower," adds the magistrate, "extremely pessimistic about its evolution." "It remains in a very dangerous state."

Sarah Hervouet

On a parking lot in Boussy-Saint-Georges, this 26-year-old woman "strongly rooted in jihadism" tried to kill
an ISB officer stabbing him. "The blood flowed on this file and Sarah Hervouët is the author," said the general counsel. "We can not make much risky bets. The public prosecutor's office has requested a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment with a two-thirds security period against her.

Samia Chalel

She is accused of helping Ines Madani to find a base after the failed attack. Her "anchoring in radicalization remains worrying," observes the magistrate. Against this 26-year-old French-Algerian, the public prosecutor's office required 10 years' imprisonment with a two-thirds security period.

Mohamed Lamine Aberouz

"Fine, cunning, intelligent, fearsome", "cultivated", the 26-year-old is being tried for non-denunciation of a terrorist crime. Mohamed Lamine Aberouz is, among all the accused, the one who is "pursued for the most minor acts". But he is "the most dangerous," says the general counsel. "Jihad is her life," she adds, recalling that he is close to Larossi Abballa, the terrorist who killed two policemen in 2016 in Magnanville, Yvelines. A case in which he was indicted after his DNA was found at the scene of the crime. She demanded the maximum sentence against her: five years in prison.

Selima Aboudi

Five days before trying to blow up a car in Paris, Ines Madani told the 38-year-old woman "that she wants to make everything fart," notes the Advocate General. Judged for non-reporting of crime, she is "the only one who recognizes the full facts without trying to minimize them". Believing that the follow-up she was subjected to was "beneficial", Jean-Michel Bourles requested a four-year prison sentence against her, suspended and put to the test for three years.

Rachid Kassim

It is "the great absent from this trial", the one without which nothing would be produced, notes Jean-Michel Bourles. From Syria, Rachid Kassim urged the jihadists on Telegram to attack in France and helped the defendants in their preparations by giving them advice. He has most certainly been "killed by an American drone," said the magistrate. When in doubt, he demanded criminal imprisonment for life.