the essential
Toulouse woman Nidhel Gheziel, 35, who left for Syria in 2014 and returned to the national territory in 2022, was imprisoned for “terrorist criminal association”. This mother of two children (placed by the ASE) is today requesting her release.
Five years after the fall of the Islamic State (IS) and its caliphate, between Syria and Iraq, French justice has not finished with these “ghosts”, who left for the war zones and are now back in France. If the main French “executives” in the service of IS are declared dead in Syria (Sabri Essid, the Clain brothers for the best-known Toulouse figures close to the Artigat network), the wives of jihadists are, for their part, taken care of by the French judicial authorities as soon as they set foot on national territory. What fate should we reserve for these mothers, who say they have never taken up arms and who are assigned “secondary” roles during these stays within IS.
This is the case of a 35-year-old woman from Toulouse, Nidhel Gheziel, who left for Syria in August 2014, before being exfiltrated by her family from Turkey where she was expelled and returned to France, on November 22, 2022. This Franco -Algerian has two children aged 7 and 8, born in Syria. They are now placed in Toulouse by the child welfare services. For two years, this mother has been imprisoned in Fleury-Mérogis, indicted for “terrorist criminal association with a view to preparing one or more crimes”.
Toulouse-Tarnaise sector
It is by investigating the Albigensian and Toulouse Salafist networks that anti-terrorist investigators turn their attention to this young woman whose brilliant academic career contrasts with her blind adherence to a deadly ideology. Holder of a law degree, enrolled at Sciences Po Toulouse, Nidhel Gheziel fell into religious radicalization after 2007 and experienced the ban on wearing the veil very badly. At the Basso-Cambo mosque, in Mirail, she met a woman who managed to convince her to go to Syria, to fully live her religion. Nidhel Gheziel then gravitated around the Toulouse-Tarnaise jihadist nebula, between the brothers Clain, Essid, Barnoin, Maurize, Djebali and Megherbi, Le Brun, among others.
She is described as fragile after a stay in psychiatry. When she left in August 2014, she followed the same route as the Toulouse group to Gaziantep, on the Turkish-Syrian border. She is picked up by a smuggler and immediately taken care of by someone close to the Toulouse industry. Once in the area, the young Toulouse woman is destined to marry religiously. A usual fate for many women whose role, at that time, consisted of carrying out domestic tasks by being future mothers giving birth to the new “cubs of the caliphate”. She married Najib Megherbi who himself had left Toulouse in February 2014 to go to Syria. Two children were born from this union, in 2016 and 2017. This man distributed medicine to Syrians or groups in the area. The couple separated and divorced some time later.
Exfiltration by his family
In Toulouse, the young woman’s relatives organized the exfiltration of this mother from Syria through regular money payments. Nidhel Gheziel manages to return to Turkey by letting her loved ones know that she did not want to return to France. Finally expelled by the Turkish authorities in November 2022, she was arrested upon her arrival on national territory and taken into care by the French authorities who tried to retrace her journey. “I was manipulated before my departure to Syria, it corresponded to a difficult period in my life and depression,” she told the investigating magistrate. She then explains having resided in the town of Tabqa (Syria) until 2017, then Aleppo “to flee ISIS”. A first psychological expertise highlights “the presence of mental disorders associated with a psychotic personality”, but “without invasive paranoid delirium”. His psychological fragility would be at the origin of his commitment to the IS project, to resolve “a problem of isolation”.
Recently, the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, chaired by Judge Eric Halphen, studied his request for release made by his lawyers, Mr.are Franck Berton, Alexandre Martin and Emmanuelle Franck. The latter highlighted that it presents “no danger” and claims “no membership in the jihadist movement”. His request for release was recently refused, “to prevent any pressure or consultation with the witnesses in the case”.
According to diplomatic sources (summer 2023 count), 169 children and 57 adult women have been brought back to French territory since 2019.
