Bataclan bomber's widow and child repatriated to France

The wife of a terrorist who helped to murder dozens of people at Paris’s Bataclan concert hall in 2015 has been repatriated from Syria to France along with her three children.

Women hug in front of Paris's Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were murdered on 13 November, 2015. AP - Thibault Camus

Kahina El H, who was married to suicide bomber Samy Amimour, was returned to France on 5 July, RMC radio reported. She is the last surviving widow of the Bataclan gunmen.

Kahina and her children – one of whom is the daughter of Amimour – had been living in the Kurdish camp of Roj. The child was born after the 13 November attacks during which her father died.

Supporter of terrorism

An investigation into the attacks found that Kahina, 25, supported Amimour’s jihadist ambitions. She has been indicted for links to terrorism and placed in pre-trial detention. 

Two days after the Paris attacks that killed 130 people, Kahina reportedly sent a message to her mother telling her “I am the wife of a suicide bomber”, while also boasting to her former high school teacher that she was married to Amimour.

Kahina, who said she was proud of her husband’s actions and had encouraged them, was eight and a half months pregnant at the time of the attacks.

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Like the 15 other mothers repatriated from Syria, Kahina was separated from her three children when she landed on French soil. 

The children have been put into the care of a foster family in the Seine-Saint-Denis department north-west of Paris and are receiving psychological support.

Kahina was 17 years old in October 2014 when she joined Amimour in Syria. 

Amimour, the subject of an international arrest warrant since 2013, was able to return to France unhindered by police.