Former jihadist Vanessa B. sentenced to 11 years in prison
Paris's special assize court sentenced on Friday a former radicalised woman to 11 years' imprisonment for joining the Islamic State in Syria with her two children.
Woman tried for adhesion to Daesh
According to BFM TV, Vanessa B., 38, originally from the Lyon region, was sentenced on Friday 23 October to eleven years' criminal imprisonment. Paris's special assize court found guilty this former radical Islamist of having joined in 2013 zones controlled by the Islamic State in Syria, accompanied by her two children then aged 2 and 5.
The court also tried her for attempted murder of her partner, jihadist Mohamed Skalab from Nîmes, wounded by shotgun fire in 2014 in Raqqa. The court president indicated that the accused had been a victim of particularly intense domestic violence, a circumstance which influenced the determination of the sentence. Although an acquittal on this charge was deemed "legally impossible", this attempted murder was "set somewhat to one side" in the calculation of the conviction.
Vanessa B. was also found guilty of criminal terrorist criminal association and endangering her children. The tribunal took into account her childhood marked by placements from the age of 6 months and repeated violence, including sexual, encountered during her life. The magistrate saw in this trajectory a "key to understanding" her subsequent radicalisation.
The accused remained in Syria until the fall of the Islamic State in 2019, before being repatriated and imprisoned in October 2022. During the proceedings, she convinced the court of having renounced all religious radicalism and of no longer presenting manifest dangerousness. The tribunal also valued "the considerable efforts" that she had deployed since her return and imprisonment.
Vanessa B.'s eldest son, aged 17, testified to the ordeal experienced in Syria between 2013 and 2022. Two of her daughters, one who left with her and the other born there, were killed in a bombing. Another child, a son born in Syria, survived. The verdict does not provide for a security period. The public prosecutor's office had sought sixteen years' imprisonment with two-thirds of a security period.
Source: BFM TV