Three French women - members of the Clain family who converted to fundamentalist Islam and travelled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State armed group - go on trial Monday in Paris on charges of terrorist criminal association.
Among the defendants is Jennyfer Clain, 34, the niece of Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain, two prominent figures of the Islamic State (IS) who were known for having recorded the claim of responsibility for the 13 November terrorist attacks in Paris.
Both were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole, and were killed in an airstrike in 2019.
Appearing with her are her sister-in-law, Mayalen Duhart, and Christine Allain, the mother of their two husbands and the grandmother of their nine children.
The three are appearing before a specially-composed court without a jury – a standard practice in terrorist cases in France.
The trial is expected to run until 26 September, and the defendants face up to 30 years in prison.
The indictment, quoted by the French news agency AFP, claims the women's departure to Syria was part of "a trajectory that had been ideologically committed for over ten years to Salafi-jihadism".
Clain 'clan'
The defendants are part of what investigators refer to as the "Clain clan": over 20 members of the family, based near Toulouse, left France with their spouses and children to go to Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2015.
Among them were Marie-Rosane Clain, three of her children - including Fabien and Jean-Michel - and several grandchildren, including Jennyfer.
Jennyfer Clain, who began a religious education at the age after her stepfather, Mohamed Mongi Amri, had converted the family to Islam, entered into a religious marriage at 15 in order to join her uncles in Egypt.
Former wife of IS commander to stand trial in France on Yazidi genocide charges
She married Kevin Gonot, a friend of Fabien and Jean-Michel Clain, who later became an IS member, and is currently in prison in Iraq, where he was initially sentenced to death for membership in IS before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
In 2014 Jennyfer Clain followed Gonot to Raqqa, Syria, where his mother, Christine Allain, was also living.
She had converted to Islam a few years earlier, after being introduced to the Koran by her eldest son, Thomas Collange, who had also converted his partner, Mayalen Duhart.
Starting in 2004, the couple travelled to Syria multiple times and settled there permanently in 2014, three years after the war began.
Back to France
Christine Allain, Jennyfer Clain, and Mayalen Duhart arrived in France in 2019 along with nine children aged between 3 and 13 years old, and they were formally charged.
They had been arrested two months earlier in Turkey, on the Syrian border. For two years after the fall of Raqqa they had been wandering – their husbands had already been arrested.
Top French jihadist and wife handed jail terms
Investigating judges decided to refer the three women to a criminal court because they had "remained for an extended period" within jihadist groups.
Prosecutors argue that Jennyfer Clain "integrated and contributed to the functioning of the Islamic State", embraced its ideology, benefitted from housing and financial support provided by the group, and maintained regular contact with active members of IS throughout her stay.
What responsibility?
Interviewed in 2021, she claimed she had only "carried out normal daily activities" and played "no role" within IS, stating her main concern was her four children.
Her lawyer, Guillaume Halbique, hopes her ideological transformation during her time in custody will be taken into account.
From the moment she was placed in isolation at the start of her detention in France, "she realised she could ask questions and think for herself," he said, adding that all she wants today is to care for her children as best she can.
Jennyfer Clain and Mayalen Duhart are facing charges of neglecting their parental responsibilities - a charge that has been imposed since 2017 on any parent who took their minor children to the Iraq-Syria conflict zone.
The women are accused of deliberately taking their children, who had been born and living in France, to a war zone to join a terrorist group, thereby exposing them to serious physical and psychological risks, including long-term trauma.
Jennifer Clain’s four children, with whom she has maintained contact during her detention, will be civil parties in the trial, represented by their own lawyer.
(with AFP)
