PARIS: A French court on Friday handed jail sentences of up to 13 years to three women for joining the Daesh group in Syria, including the niece of notorious militant propagandist brothers.
Jennyfer Clain, 34, whose uncles Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain had publicly claimed responsibility on behalf of Daesh for the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, was sentenced to 11 years for belonging to Daesh.
Her sister-in-law, Mayalen Duhart, 42, was given 10 years and 67-year-old Christine Allain, the women’s mother-in-law, 13 years.
Earlier in court, Jennyfer Clain had apologized to all “direct and indirect victims” of the militants, “in France, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.”
The Daesh group seized swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq during the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and left hundreds of thousands dead, and loudly took responsibility for atrocities around the world.
During the worst attack on Paris since World War II, militant gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall and elsewhere.
The Clain brothers are presumed to have died during the military campaign by US-backed Kurdish groups that eventually defeated Daesh in 2019.
Three years later, the siblings were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment without parole.
“I am not asking them to forgive me, it is unforgivable, but I offer them my deepest and most sincere apologies,” Jennyfer Clain said, referring to the victims.
Jennyfer Clain went to the Middle East with four children, and her fifth baby was born in Raqqa, the city Daesh militants claimed as their capital.
Duhart brought her four children with her and had a baby there, who died at seven months.
Weeping in court, Jennyfer Clain asked her five children, who have been placed in foster care since their return to France in 2019, for forgiveness.
“I am sorry for everything they have been through because of me,” said Clain, who is also on trial for abandoning minors. “I have failed in my role as a mother.”
“I am not a victim,” Duhart said. “The victims are the others, those who were tortured and massacred by the organization I belonged to. I am responsible.”
Earlier this week the presiding judge had pointed out to the three women that they had not said anything about the victims of the attacks.
Allain said that she had been touched by her meeting in prison with Georges Salines, the father of Lola Salines, one of the victims killed at the Bataclan.
Jennyfer Clain’s lawyer, Guillaume Halbique, welcomed the “balanced” verdict for his client, adding she was unlikely to appeal.
“Her ideological commitment (to Daesh) is completely behind her and has been for many years,” he added.
French court jails three women who joined Daesh in Syria
https://arab.news/r6z7y
French court jails three women who joined Daesh in Syria
- Jennyfer Clain, 34, was sentenced to 11 years for belonging to Daesh
- Her sister-in-law, Mayalen Duhart, 42, was given 10 years and 67-year-old Christine Allain, the women’s mother-in-law, 13 years
Federal judge rules Kilmar Abrego Garcia can’t be re-detained by immigration authorities
- Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
The Salvadoran national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.
The government “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, wrote in her Tuesday order. “From this, the Court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. By mistake, he was deported there anyway last year.
Facing public pressure and a court order, President Donald Trump’s administration brought him back in June, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, Trump officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. In court filings, officials have said they intended to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia.
In her Tuesday order, Xinis noted the government has “purposely — and for no reason — ignored the one country that has consistently offered to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, and to which he agrees to go.” That country is Costa Rica.
Abrego Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, argued in court that immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment. Immigrants can only be detained as a way to facilitate their deportation and cannot be held indefinitely with no viable deportation plan.
“Since Judge Xinis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia released in mid-December, the government has tried one trick after another to try to get him re-detained,” Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote in an email on Tuesday. “In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today.”
The government should now engage in a good-faith effort to work out the details of removal to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote.
