A Frenchwoman jailed for her part in a foiled 2016 plot to blow up a car packed with gas canisters near Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was back in court on Wednesday to appeal her 30-year jail sentence. FRANCE 24's Yena Lee reports from the courthouse.
Inès Madani, 24, was arrested with four other women after a car packed with gas cylinders was found parked near the bustling esplanade in front of the cathedral in the heart of the capital on November 4, 2016.
The two main defendants, Madani and Ornella Gilligmann, had doused the car with diesel in the middle of the night and tried but failed to set it alight with a cigarette.
They were tried in October 2019 and sentenced to 30 years and 25 years in prison, respectively.
The women are believed to have acted on the orders of Rachid Kassim, a French Islamic State (IS) group propagandist also suspected of ordering the grisly murder of a French police couple at their home in June 2016.
Kassim is believed to have been killed in an air strike near the Iraqi city of Mosul in February 2017.
Madani was arrested a few days after the failed attack in a Paris suburb along with two other defendants, who were each sentenced to 20 years.
The three burst out of the apartment, to which they had been tracked down by police, brandishing knives.
'Trying to reduce her sentence'
Madani, who expressed regret for her actions during the 2019 trial, is the only one to have appealed her sentence.
Her lawyer Tewfik Bouzenoune has agued that the 30-year prison sentence is no longer adapted to Madani, saying that she has "considerably changed" since the foiled attack.
"Today's appeal isn't so much about [Madani] hoping she will get off scot-free; it's more about trying to reduce her sentence," said FRANCE 24's Yena Lee, reporting from the Paris courthouse.
Madani has also been sentenced to eight years in prison in a separate case involving the recruitment of jihadists to go to Syria and participate in attacks against France.
She was found guilty in April 2019 of helping to recruit would-be jihadists, including Gilligmann, by posing as a male IS group fighter.
France has been struck by multiple Islamist terrorist attacks since 2015, with more than 250 people killed and hundreds more injured.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
