Bryan Dancona was not yet 17, in 2013, when he entered Syria illegally.
Ten years after his departure from France, a “ghost” presented himself, the first week of May, at the consulate in Istanbul (Turkey), accompanied by his daughter, as several sources told France Télévisions, confirming a information from the Terrorism Analysis Center (CAT). Bryan Dancona, suspected of being a jihadist, has a unique journey. He is indeed one of the first French people to have left France to reach the theater of war in Syria. He is also one of the youngest.
This convert was about to celebrate his 17th birthday when, on December 27, 2013, he left his mother behind and boarded a plane for Istanbul, carrying his only national identity card, before smuggling to Syria. . In the city of Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) where he lived, he made no secret of his desire to join armed jihadist groups. He would have been influenced by his religious mentor, Omar Diaby, from Nice like him, at the head of a group affiliated with Al-Qaedaactive in northwestern Syria.
What did Bryan Dancona do during these ten years of war? The intelligence services have never completely lost sight of him. He was very active in recruiting young French people. There, he would have religiously married a compatriot, who arrived in 2019. The couple had a daughter before separating. According to a source close to the investigation, Bryan Dancona would have left in 2021 or 2022 the camp in which the couple was installed, near Idlib, a city located between Homs and Aleppo, in the north-west of Syria. When he presented himself, without his ex-wife, at the French consulate in Istanbul, at the beginning of May, the young man explained that he wanted to return to France with his daughter.
Now 26, he could soon be expelled by the Turkish authorities. Targeted by an arrest warrant, he risks being indicted for “criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise” on his return to France. Asked by France Télévisions, Samia Maktouf, lawyer for the young man’s mother, did not wish to comment.