A French court has sentenced a woman repatriated from detention camps in Syria to 10 years’ imprisonment over her involvement with the Islamic State group.
The special criminal court in Paris on Thursday found Carole Sun, 30, guilty of participation in a terrorist criminal conspiracy, according to a report.
Sun travelled from France to Syria in July 2014 alongside her brother at the height of the IS insurgency. She was arrested by Kurdish forces in December 2017 as the group’s self-declared caliphate was collapsing and was subsequently held in a detention camp in northeastern Syria with other women and children.
She returned to France on July 5, 2022, as part of the first batch of French nationals repatriated from the Syrian camps. During the trial, Sun told the court she had been radicalised through online content before leaving France.
In delivering judgment, the court said the defendant had associated with, or lived alongside, “extremely high-profile individuals” linked to acts of extreme violence or to combat units connected to the November 2015 attacks in Paris.
Sun’s second husband was identified as a member of the IS intelligence apparatus. In a message previously sent to her mother, she reportedly said he “kills traitors”. Both the man and Sun’s brother are currently being held in Iraq.
Addressing the court, Sun said IS ideology had prevented her from fully grasping the gravity of events unfolding around her at the time. She admitted that she had played a role in disseminating propaganda for the group.
She also described life inside the detention camp as harsh and intimidating, noting that she spent more than four years there raising her children amid what she called a climate of fear.
“It’s like a jungle,” she said, adding that moral conflicts persisted even among children in the camp.
French authorities say about 60 women remain to be tried on similar charges. According to the public prosecutor, more than one-third of French women who travelled to Syria have since returned, with 30 tried by the special criminal court since 2017, while others have faced proceedings in regular criminal courts.
