Frenchwoman sentenced to 10 years for terrorist conspiracy

PARIS – The second Frenchwoman to be repatriated from Syrian camps holding Islamic State (IS) members and displaced people was on Dec 18 sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Carole Sun, 30, was found guilty of participating in a terrorist criminal conspiracy by a special criminal court in Paris.

She left France for Syria in July 2014 with her brother and was arrested by Kurdish forces in December 2017, when the IS self-styled caliphate was collapsing.

She and other women were then held in detention camps in Idlib. Sun returned to France on July 5, 2022 as part of the first repatriation of French nationals.

She told the court she had been radicalised online.

The judge said the defendant knew or lived with “extremely high-profile individuals” who were known for “cruel” acts or for fighting in units with links to the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Sun’s second marriage was to a member of the IS intelligence service, whom she once wrote to her mother “kills traitors”. He is currently imprisoned in Iraq, as is her brother.

The defendant told the judge that IS ideology “kept me from seeing how serious” the events transpiring around her were.

She acknowledged that she “contributed” to the group’s “propaganda”.

She also described “frightening” people around her in the camp, where she spent more than four years raising her children.

“It’s like a jungle,” Sun said. “There is a moral war going on there, even among the children.”

Around 60 women are yet to be tried for similar charges.

Over one-third of the French women who went to the Syrian region have returned, according to the public prosecutor, and since 2017, 30 have been tried by the special court, while others have been tried in criminal court. AFP