French woman 'obsessed' with joining Islamic State in Syria jailed for 12 years

A Paris court sentenced a French woman to 12 years in prison for two stays in Syria and territory controlled by the Islamic State armed group

A woman walks with a child at a camp for people affiliated with the Islamic State in Syria near the border with Turkey in 2018. © Delil Souleiman/AFP

Douha Mounib, 32, was found guilty of associating with terrorists in her two stays in Syria, between 2013 and 2017.

The special court noted her "uncommon determination” to join the Islamic State armed group.

In court Mounib detailed her radicalisation in 2012 and her desire to go to Syria that turned into an “obsession”.

In 2012, after watching propaganda videos, se quit her midwife studies and started wearing a veil. She first went to Syria in 2013, traveling from Morocco to Turkey, where she married a smuggler, who helped her cross the border.

The stay was cut short after two months, but she never stopped wanting to go back and join the Islamic State.

After several attempts, she crossed the Turkish border with Syria with her second husband in 2015, and they spent 15 months between Mossul, in Iraq and Raqqa, in Syria, both under IS control.

Mounib left the territory at the end of 2016 and was arrested in March 2017 on the Turkish border with her infant daughter and her husband’s young son.

After nine months in a Turkish detention centre, she was sent back to France at the end of 2017 and incarcerated.

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When the presiding judge asked Mounib if she understood the sentence and the decision, she answered that she “expected a sentence of more than ten years”.

National antiterrorist prosecutors had asked for 14 years of prison, but the court took into account what they called the “evolution” of Mounib’s attitude towards the IS, which she promised was part of her past.

Though her attempt to escape from the Fresnes prison in November 2021 did not help her case.

(with AFP)