Frenchwoman appeals 30-year jail sentence for foiled Notre-Dame attack

A Frenchwoman jailed for attempting to blow up a car packed with gas canisters near Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2016 has returned to court to appeal her 30-year jail sentence.

A courtroom sketch made on 11 April 2019, of Ines Medani, convicted of trying to blow up Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. She received a 30-year sentence on appeal. AFP

Inès Madani, 24, was arrested with four other women after a car packed with gas cylinders was found parked near the bustling esplanade in front of the cathedral in the heart of the capital on November 4, 2016.

The two main defendants, Madani and Ornella Gilligmann, attempted to set the car alight in the middle of the night but had doused the car in diesel, which failed to ignite. 

They were tried in October 2019 and sentenced to 30 years and 25 years in prison, respectively.

The women are believed to have acted on the orders of Rachid Kassim, a French Islamic State (IS) group propagandist also suspected of ordering the grisly murder of a French police couple at their home in June 2016.

Kassim is believed to have been killed in an air strike near the Iraqi city of Mosul in February 2017.

Madani was arrested a few days after the failed attack in a Paris suburb along with two other defendants, who were each sentenced to 20 years.

The three burst out of the apartment, to which they had been tracked down by police, brandishing knives.

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Gilligmann was sentenced in October 2019 to 25 years in prison. She did not appeal.

Although both women initially denied responsibility for trying to carry out a terrorist attack, they had been under the sway of Rachid Kassim, French propagandist for Islamic State (IS) group. Kassim had called for members to carry out attacks in France in the summer of 2016.

After the failed cathedral attack, Madani, again under the management of Kassim, joined two other women to carry out a new attack. Accomplices Amel Sakaou and Sarah Hervouët were sentenced to 20 years in prison.

(with AFP)