French court tries Aouidate among 18 female returnee cases

Paris’s special terrorism court opened Radia Tahar Aouidate’s trial on Wednesday; 18 of its 23 terrorism cases this year involve female Islamic State returnees, RFI said in an Oct. 15 article.

The case matters because women were nearly a third of the roughly 1,500 French nationals who travelled to Syria and Iraq, while 176 of 395 adults who returned to France were women, according to National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office figures cited by Le Monde.

Aouidate, also known as Selma, appeared before the Paris court on charges of participating in a terrorist criminal conspiracy over alleged involvement with Islamic State between 2014 and 2020. She is also accused of recruiting another person.

The court has not reached a verdict. If convicted, Aouidate faces a sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Aouidate said in court that her family was “a cult” even before its radicalisation, with her brother Fodil as its central authority figure. She said he exercised “absolute” authority over his eight sisters, with their mother’s approval.

Between May and September 2014, 23 members of the family travelled from Roubaix in northern France to Syria. The group included Aouidate’s parents, six sisters, their husbands and children; Fodil left in June 2014 despite being under surveillance.

Fodil is now imprisoned in Iraq. He was among 11 French nationals sentenced to death in Iraq in 2019 for belonging to Islamic State, before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

The Aouidate case sits within a broader judicial sequence. Fifty-six female returnees have been convicted by the special court, and proceedings have increasingly involved women after France tried the main terrorism attacks and attempted attacks.

Aouidate was married by her brother to a Tunisian Islamic State fighter. Like 86% of the 22 female returnees whose cases were heard by the special courts in 2026, she gave birth in Syria; her two children, now aged nine and 11, are under French state care.