French Court Sentences Repatriated ISIS-Affiliated Woman to 10 Years in Prison
Sun, 30, was found guilty of participating in a terrorist criminal conspiracy, becoming the second French woman repatriated from Syrian camps to be convicted by French courts.
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – A special criminal court in Paris on Thursday sentenced Carole Sun, a French national repatriated from camps in Syria holding ISIS members and displaced people, to 10 years in prison on terrorism-related charges.
Sun, 30, was found guilty of participating in a terrorist criminal conspiracy, becoming the second French woman repatriated from Syrian camps to be convicted by French courts.
According to the court, Sun left France for Syria in July 2014 with her brother at the height of ISIS territorial expansion. She was arrested by Kurdish-led forces in December 2017 as the group’s self-declared caliphate was collapsing and subsequently detained in camps in west Kurdistan (northwestern Syria). She remained there for more than four years, during which time she raised her children, before being returned to France on July 5, 2022, as part of the country’s first repatriation of its nationals.
During the trial, Sun told the court she had been radicalized online prior to her departure and admitted to contributing to ISIS propaganda activities. Judges noted that she had lived among, or alongside, “extremely high-profile individuals” known for carrying out acts of violence or fighting in units linked to the November 2015 Paris attacks.
The court also heard that Sun’s second husband was a member of ISIS’s intelligence apparatus. In a message previously sent to her mother, Sun wrote that he “kills traitors.” Both her husband and her brother are currently imprisoned in Iraq.
Addressing the court, Sun said that ISIS ideology had prevented her from fully grasping the severity of the crimes being committed around her. She described the detention camp environment as “frightening,” portraying it as a place marked by internal violence and radicalization, even among children. “It’s like a jungle,” she said, adding that "there's a moral war going on there.”
French prosecutors say around 60 women are still awaiting trial on similar terrorism-related charges. More than one-third of French women who traveled to areas once controlled by ISIS in Syria have now returned to France. Since 2017, 30 women have been tried by the special criminal court, while others have faced prosecution in standard criminal courts.