Eighteen months in prison for the half-sister of a French leader of the Islamic State

A four-year prison sentence, including eighteen months in prison, to be served under an electronic tag, was handed down on Thursday, June 27, to Khadija A., half-sister of Boubaker El-Hakim, one of the French leaders of the Islamic State (IS) organization. This 43-year-old Tunisian was prosecuted for having joined her brother in Syria in 2015 with her four-year-old daughter. The prosecution had requested a 5-year prison sentence, including two years in prison, against her.

In announcing its decision, the president of the 16th criminal chamber, Murielle Desheraud, said that the Paris court had taken into account both “the seriousness of the facts” but also “family life” and “personal journey” of the defendant since her arrest in Paris in December 2016. The president praised her “occupational integration” and his “strong presence” with his daughter, now 14 years old.

Khadija A., who appeared free, maintained that she had not been to Syria “voluntarily” but that she had only followed her mother (Habiba A., also mother of Boubaker El-Hakim) of whom she was under “the influence”. The court followed the prosecution’s requests for “discard” the pain “OBLIGATORY” ban on entry to French territory of a foreign national in terrorism cases. The defendant “has lived in France for a long time and his daughter was born and raised in France”argued the prosecutor, heard on this point by the court.

Boubaker El-Hakim, born in Paris in August 1983, was a figure of Islamist jihadism, who had been with Al-Qaeda before joining ISIS. Considered one of the highest-ranking French officers in the unit responsible for ISIS’s external operations, he was killed by a US strike in Raqqa in November 2016.