A Paris court has imposed this Friday a sentence of eight years in prison on Radia Selma Tahar Aouidate, a 33-year-old French citizen who in 2014 traveled to Syria to join the ranks of the jihadist group Islamic State and who returned to France seven years later.
The sentence of the Paris Criminal Court is one year below the request made by the Prosecutor's Office against this "returnee," accused of the crime of "unlawful association with terrorist purposes."
Mother of two children, Aouidate has already spent five and a half years imprisoned in France. She comes from a strongly radicalized family background, as 23 of her relatives also moved to Syria to settle in the caliphate proclaimed by Islamic State and, in the case of the men, to fight in its ranks.
According to revelations by the newspaper 'Libération' and Radio France Internationale, the brother of the accused, Fodil, played a key role in the radicalization of this family originally from Roubaix, a town located on the border with Belgium.
During the oral hearing, the defendant admitted her adherence to "armed jihad," acknowledged having traveled to Syria "by choice" and having "consolidated" the caliphate project with her presence. However, she maintained that she left the organization in January 2019, in a context in which, as she explained, leaving "was very difficult" due to "the risk of death, the material difficulties" and her progressive ideological distancing.