It is a journey in the footsteps of the two most influential French jihadists of the Islamic State group: Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain. These two brothers claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 from the city of Raqqa, stronghold of the Islamic State group in Syria. Between 2014 and 2015, they notably lived in a residential area with their families, where Daesh had requisitioned the most opulent apartments. The inhabitants have not forgotten their faces, but few dare to speak about them, for fear of reprisals.
Arrived in 2015 after his brother, Fabien has his habits in a fast food restaurant with other jihadists. “They arrived every day in military uniform with all their weapons and they were armed to the teeth.”, says the merchant met by France 2. “They didn’t trust anyone and they didn’t feel safe anywhere. They had their ammunition belts and rifles on their shoulders. They had a lot of money, they were paying in dollars and Syrian pounds.” The standard of living of the Clains is then higher than that of the Syrian population, according to testimonies collected on the spot.
Two residents, neighbors of a former Daesh HQ, also agree to answer questions from France 2, on condition of anonymity. They formally recognize Jean-Michel Clain, and say they met him in 2015. “This one often went down with his colleagues in the cellar, they had a lot of computer equipment and large sums of money”, explains one of the two men. “It was a very protected building, there were black vans with tinted windows going back and forth all the time.” For the police officers who testified during the trial of the attacks, the Clain brothers are more than propagandists of the Islamic State group: they also played a key role in the cell in charge of the attacks in France and their financing.
“When the building was bombed in 2016, help arrived, but the Daesh people were clinging to the bags of money that filled the cellar”, explains a second inhabitant. “Other jihadists came to collect the money with their black van. This Frenchman told us that he had lost his computer and 10,000 dollars”. After the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, images of the attacks are projected on a giant screen installed on Place Naïm, where the jihadists behead their victims in public. The Clain brothers were then the most wanted French people in the world.
France 2 also met a tribal chief who has collaborated with the Islamic State group in the past, and adds to having since severed any link with the jihadists. “The French applied the laws of Islam on a daily basis, but like all foreigners, they remained among themselves”, he explains. “We didn’t have contact, we didn’t talk to each other about anything. They didn’t trust us, and neither did we.” Driven from Raqqa during the coalition bombardments, the two brothers end up taking refuge with the most irreducible jihadists in the last Syrian bastion, Baghouz. The Islamic State group declared them dead in March 2019, after strikes on this city.
Their wives are still being held at the Roj camp in northeastern Syria, along with other jihadist families. Mylène Foucré, wife of Fabien, follows the trial from a distance. According to the Kurdish authorities, it has still not renounced the ideology of Daesh. Questioned by France 2, she continues to deny the involvement of her husband and contests his trial. “Someone who is alive and being judged, I find that logical, but he is dead. I don’t see how that will give relief to people.” For French justice, the two brothers were aware of the Paris attacks before their realization. They are tried by default, their death in 2019 during coalition strikes not having been formally proven.