Fourteen individual cells, for fourteen women already convicted or awaiting trial for acts of terrorism. In January, a new radicalization treatment unit, reserved for women, was inaugurated at the Roanne penitentiary center (Loire). Located on the ground floor and completely isolated from the rest of the establishment, this specialized area is dedicated to welcoming, for a renewable period of six months, radicalized women who have lived under the banner of Daesh in Iraq or Syria. , having tried to join the Islamic State without succeeding, or even tried for attempted attacks. This specialized district is the second of its kind in France, after that of the Rennes prison (Ille-et-Vilaine), inaugurated in 2021 and able to accommodate around thirty inmates. The specific care of these women, most of whom were serving their sentences in traditional detention centers, is essential: according to the latest figures communicated to L’Express by the prison administration, 94 women were incarcerated at the beginning of January for terrorism – a record. Among them, 79 were “present in camps in Syria”, specifies the Ministry of Justice.
In an international study on the legal support for female jihadists, published on January 31 by the International Center for Counterterrorism, Ifri researcher Marc Hecker explains in particular this peak in “female” imprisonments by the decision of the French government to modify its repatriation policy from 2022. After more than eighteen months without any repatriation, around sixty women have returned from the Iraqi-Syrian zone since July 2022. Almost all of them were directly placed in detention provisional, and sentenced to heavy sentences. “The average sentence for the ghosts studied in my sample is around six years, which is higher than in the other countries studied such as Belgium, Germany or the Netherlands,” explains Marc Hecker to L’ Express.
But if these women are today the subject of increased vigilance and specific monitoring in detention, the specialist recalls in his report that their commitment within the Islamic State has, for a long time, been underestimated. by certain members of the judicial institution and part of public opinion. During the first waves of repatriations, the anti-terrorism magistrates thus interpreted the role of these women in two different ways. “Some of them had a restrictive vision of the incrimination of terrorist criminal association [AMT]considering that only the fighters should be condemned”, writes Marc Hecker, citing the words of the former anti-terrorism judge David Bénichou. From this perspective, the wives of jihadists are then considered “as a sort of attribute of their husband” and “cannot be held responsible for the terrorist intent of their male guardians.” Other magistrates, on the contrary, already considered women as part of the logistics of the terrorist organization. “It’s complicated to know “there was a real gender bias, but we must not exclude this possibility”, believes Marc Hecker, recalling that the first women involved in jihadist networks gave at the time “stereotyped speeches, which consisted of saying that “They thought they were doing humanitarian work, participating in a religious project, following their husbands.”
“A terrorist like any other”
Géraldine Casutt, associate researcher at the Swiss Islam and Society center at the University of Fribourg, speaks more readily of “error perceptions” concerning the engagement of these women within Daesh: “Before 2016, their participation was considered as accidental, collateral, passive. It was considered that women could only be companions of men with whom they had fallen in love, or even victims of a violent society that they had underestimated.”
This error can be explained in particular, according to the researcher, by the definition and interpretation of terrorism in the West, long perceived through the sole prism of violence. “As long as these women did not carry out an attack, strictly speaking, they were seen as second-rate actors. This was a serious error, since violence is only one means among others to achieve the objectives jihad,” she says. In reality, from France or in the Iraqi-Syrian zone, many of these women played the role of “facilitators, psychological and logistical support, communicators, while perpetuating the jihadist system through motherhood and the transmission of ideologies , for example. Their dangerousness in terms of social capital was taken into account very late,” insists the researcher.
The failed attempted attack in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in September 2016, sponsored by an exclusively female terrorist cell, contributed to changing the public perception of the role of female jihadists. “Suddenly, we understood that a woman could be a terrorist like any other,” summarizes Marc Hecker. A few months before this event, the courts were already taking stock of the commitment of women to jihad: in July 2016, the Court of Cassation handed down a ruling affirming that the simple fact of joining a terrorist organization constituted a terrorism offense. In summary, men and women can be considered terrorists even if they are not directly involved in acts of violence. “This notably allowed the systematic pursuit of the wives of jihadists or jihadist women who were returning from Syria,” comments Marc Hecker. In a newspaper interview The world dating from September 2, 2016, the public prosecutor François Molins indicated that 59 women had already been indicted for acts of terrorism, including 18 detained.
“Fascination with death”
Same vigilance for women who failed to leave for Syria or Iraq, but are widely involved in Daesh networks. “In the sample that I studied, around twenty women were convicted for violent projects in France, the vast majority of whom had never left the national territory,” explains Marc Hecker. This involvement is directly explained by the strategy put in place by the Islamic State from the end of 2014. While departures to Syria are made more difficult by the French authorities, Daesh adapts and begins aggressive propaganda aimed at pushing its members into crime on their national territories, designating specific targets in advance and facilitating their action.
“This is how, in 2016, several women, for example, had a long-distance relationship with Rachid Kassim, a member of Daesh present in the Iraqi-Syrian zone. [NDLR : il est aussi impliqué dans plusieurs attentats ou tentatives d’attentats en France]. This is what we call remote-controlled terrorism: Kassim probably thought that women would arouse less suspicion from the police,” estimates Marc Hecker. In the listening extracts that the researcher was able to study, he sometimes emphasizes astonishing profiles. “Several women convicted of terrorism were minors at the time of the events. We observe in some of them a mixture of ‘lol culture’, fascination with death, and religious references, with expressions like ‘you have to kill kouffars’. Often, they then defend themselves by explaining that it was a simple teenage madness,” he testifies.
“None of the cases we handle are identical, all these women have different stories and backgrounds… But many of them, rather young, are part of a generation that grew up with social networks: the use of the Internet is not a question, it is a basic. And it is on the Internet that they were able to become radicalized,” confirms an anti-terrorism investigating judge to L’Express. According to him, some women also explain “very precisely” how, “from an uneventful teenager schooled in a provincial department, they took a path of radicalization on social networks or via online discussion groups, until leaving for Syria”, adds – he.
TikTok and religious influencers
Despite the collapse of Daesh territory, this fascination with violence and religious radicalism is far from having died out among young women. According to the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR), the number of reports of radicalization among women has even increased in recent months. Between October 2022 and October 2023, the departmental units for the prevention of radicalization and family support (CPRAF), responsible for providing social and psychological support to people in the process of radicalization, observed a “constant progression” in female reports. . In 2023, 46% of follow-ups concerned women, compared to 44% in 2022. Girls have also become the majority among minors monitored by the CPRAF: of the 1,778 young people supported in 2023, 51% were women, compared to 44% in 2022.
“There is no typical profile, but common characteristics: weak family integration, or conversely confinement in families that are themselves largely radicalized, young girls who are often fragile, in search of an identity, brought towards communitarian or separatist movements by their entourage or social networks…”, list Etienne Apaire, secretary general of the CIPDR. “The phenomenon of female radicalization has not disappeared, quite the contrary. All the ingredients are still present today, reinforced by something that did not exist in 2014: TikTok,” adds Géraldine Casutt.
Through social networks, the researcher observes a trivialization of radical, separatist, even jihadist content, disseminated by a multitude of “religious influencer” profiles among young women. “There is a real game of influence on the networks: it is not because violence is no longer visible in terms of attacks that it does not exist,” she argues. Charline Delporte, president of the National Center for Family Support and Training in the Face of Sectarian Control, also testifies to “an increase” in the number of young girls in the process of radicalization followed by her association. “We have seen growing suspicions of radicalization among young women who suddenly change their clothing, advocate antisocial, hateful, rigorous discourse, cut themselves off from everything else. Some convert to a rigorous Islam by watching videos of women who innocently offer cooking classes on the networks”, testifies the director, who even had to report certain profiles to the authorities. “One of them was, for example, arrested by the DGSI for advocating acts of terrorism, after having published Salafist comments on social networks or made videos of pro-Salafist sermons,” regrets the association.
A territorial intelligence agent, responsible for studying this type of report, confirms. “The impact of social networks is enormous. There we find discussion, mutual aid or sharing groups which are real catch-alls, and can quickly deviate towards separatist withdrawal, marginalization, anti-institution hatred, even a radicalization with violent potential, with the apology of terrorism or phrases like ‘I will kill all the unbelievers'”, he testifies to L’Express. The agent does not underestimate this type of profile. “If, in their comments, young women can be less violent than men, they can be very active and very proselytizing on social networks. It is a radicalization like any other, just as dangerous,” he underlines .
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