Heavy sentences for the jihadists of Notre-Dame

PARIS (Reuters) – The Paris special Assize Court on Monday night sentenced five women accused of planning attacks under the influence of the Islamic State (IS), including to gas cylinders near Notre Dame Cathedral in 2016.

Ines M. was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, Ornella G. to 25 years in prison.

Sarah H. and Amel S. are sentenced to twenty years in prison each, Samia C. to five years' imprisonment, one of which is suspended.

The facts went back to September 2016.

On the 4th, at 07:30, the police discovered a gray Peugeot 607, without license plate, parked in front of 43 rue de la Bûcherie, on the opposite bank to the forecourt of Notre-Dame.

The deminers called in reinforcement leave the vehicle six gas cylinders and three plastic bottles containing diesel and what looks like a device firing artisanal – remnants of cigarette and a cover soaked with diesel.

The fingerprints taken in the cockpit are formal: they belong to Ornella G. and Ines M., the first, already known by the intelligence services for wanting to join Syria in 2014, the second, for simple reasons of departure to territories under the thumb of the IS.

Ornella G. is quickly spotted and stopped on a freeway area along the A7. Ines M., for her part, reappears on September 8 in Boussy-Saint-Antoine (Essonne) during a large police operation triggered by alerts received by the DGSI (Directorate General of Internal Security) on the the imminence of an attack.

During the operation, a police officer is stabbed and three young women are arrested, Sarah H., Amel S. and Ines M., shot.

Ines M., whose lawyer Laurent Pasquet-Marinacce, asserts that she "got rid of the grip" of the IS, was already sentenced to eight years in prison for her activities as a recruiter in the service of the IS .

"I had plans for dead (…) today I have plans for life," she said Monday morning.

The man who allegedly played the instigators via encrypted messaging services, Rachid Kassim, was missing from the trial, which was held for dead since a strike in the Mosul region in 2017.

This figure of French-speaking jihad is suspected of having played a similar role in the preparation of other attacks, such as the one that cost the life of a priest from Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in July 2016.

He was sentenced in absentia on Monday to life imprisonment.

"These are sentences that are indeed heavy, but I think the court has taken the measure of the crime," said Laurent-Franck Lienard, one of the lawyers of the plaintiffs.

"She has taken the measure of this failed attack that would have killed dozens if he had succeeded, and she also took the measure of this aggression against my clients police officers and this policeman who was stabbed with a real willingness to kill in the name of a delusional ideology, "he added.

(Paris Office, edited by Sophie Louet)