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
Crime, immigration dominate as Chile votes for president
- Chileans are also choosing members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate
- A sharp increase in violent crime has sown terror in one of Latin America’s safest nations
SANTIAGO: Chileans stood in long lines on Sunday to vote in general elections dominated by far-right calls for an iron fist on crime and mass migrant deportations.
Pre-election polls showed the main left-wing candidate, Jeannette Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of a broad coalition, winning the first round of voting for president.
But far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast is tipped to prevail in December’s run-off with Donald Trump-style plans to expel all illegal migrants.
Chileans are also choosing members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate in the first general elections with compulsory voting since 2012.
Results are expected within two hours of polls closing at 4:00 p.m. (1900 GMT).
A sharp increase in murders, kidnappings and extortion over the past decade has sown terror in what is still one of Latin America’s safest nations.
- Shot for a gold chain -
“Just a few steps from my house, a young boy was recently killed because he was wearing a gold chain; he was shot. And three years ago, on my street, a young girl was almost kidnapped,” Rosario Isidora Herrera Munoz, who voted in Santiago with her six-month-old baby, told AFP.
“I hope that some day we’ll go back to the way we were before,” said Mario Faundez, an 87-year-old retired salesman.
“If we have to kill (criminals), so be it,” he added.
Jara on Sunday accused her rivals of “exacerbating fear” and spreading “hate,” and said their proposals did not amount to a full plan for governing.
The vote is seen as a litmus test for South America’s left, which has been sent packing in Argentina and Bolivia, and faces a stiff challenge in Colombian and Brazilian elections next year.
Jara served as labor minister under outgoing center-left president Gabriel Boric, who cannot run for a second consecutive term.
Ultra-right candidate Johannes Kaiser, who was closing in on Jara and Kast in the final days of campaigning, told AFP the election was about ending Latin America’s “disconnection...from the United States and the free world.”
- Walls, fences, trenches -
Despite a declining murder rate, Chileans remain transfixed by the growing violence of criminals, which they blame on the arrival of gangs from Venezuela and elsewhere.
Kast has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to keep out newcomers from poorer countries to the north, such as Venezuela.
Maite Sanchez, a 34-year-old Cuban living legally in Chile, expressed dismay on Sunday over the demonization of migrants “who did things properly, arrived with the right paperwork...and are contributing to the country.
Former YouTube polemicist Kaiser, a fan of Argentina’s Javier Milei, is the most radical of the candidates.
The 49-year-old libertarian MP energized youth voters with rock-themed rallies and blunt language about crime, immigration and the left.
Conservative ex-minister Evelyn Matthei, the 72-year-old establishment choice, struggled to make her mark on the campaign.
- Uphill battle -
Jara faces an uphill battle to overcome strong anti-communist and anti-incumbent sentiment.
Boric defeated Kast in 2021 on a promise to establish a welfare state after mass demonstrations in 2019 over inequality.
But his presidency was fatally weakened after voters massively rejected a progressive new constitution that he had backed.
Jara campaigned as a moderate with a track record of social reforms — she lowered the working week from 45 hours to 40 and raised the minimum wage — and vowing to ensure “every Chilean family can easily make it to the end of the month.”
Patricia Orellana, a 56-year-old Jara voter, said she feared a rollback in women’s rights if Kast or Kaiser, both of whom oppose abortion, won.
Kast, if elected, would be the first far-right leader since the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
The son of a German soldier in Hitler’s Nazi army, Kast has defended Pinochet, who overthrew a democratically elected socialist president in 1973 and oversaw a regime that killed thousands of dissidents.
