Amandine Le Coz
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Amandine Le Coz | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1990 (age 35–36) |
| Occupations | model, professional caregiver |
| Known for | travel to Syria and marriage to ISIL members, repatriation to France and conviction for terrorism |
| Spouse(s) | Yacine Rettoun (married and divorced, 2014) Haroun Belfilali (2016–present) |
| Children | 1 son (born March 2017) |
Amandine Le Coz (born 1990) is a French convert to Islam, who in 2014, left her home in France and traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In 2019, she and her toddler son were repatriated to France after spending a year and a half in a Kurdish detention camp. In 2023, Le Coz was sentenced to ten years in prison for joining ISIL.[1][2]
She was one of forty women married to ISIL jihadists who were tried and convicted of terror-related offenses in France.[3] Le Coz was one of the first returnees from the Syrian civil war to be tried for her involvement in terrorism. Her ten-year sentence for criminal terrorist conspiracy was slightly less than the eleven-year term the prosecution requested, and one-third of the maximum thirty-year sentence.[2]
Le Coz is originally from Domont in Val-d'Oise. She had dyslexia,[2] and was later tested and determined to function at a low intellectual level with "significant psycho-affective immaturity",[1] as well as a histrionic personality.[4] She was the youngest of three children,[2] or four[4] and her father was an atheist while her mother had been raised a Christian.[2] Le Coz was placed in special education after primary school, something that made her feel "stupid" and "worthless". She adopted a gothic fashion style "to shock". In sixth grade, through a friend, she discovered Islam and found it "magnificent" but did not convert at that time.[4]
She attended a vocational high school and got a CAP (vocational certificate) in home care.[2] She got a job as a caregiver in a retirement home,[5] but lost it after a few weeks because a driver's license was necessary and she had failed her driving test five times. Le Coz then went to work at a McDonald's near her parents' home and did lingerie photoshoots to build a portfolio as a model.[2]
Conversion to Islam
Le Coz was also consuming alcohol and drugs and said that she imitated her friends' behavior "to be normal, like them." In 2013, she thought she had overdosed and felt her survival was a miracle. Le Coz then visited Tunisia, and went to a "beautiful" mosque there. Her near-death experience plus her trip to the Tunisian mosque convinced her to convert to Islam.[2] She formally converted at a mosque in Garges-lès-Gonesse.[2] Afterwards she began wearing the niqab, but only when away from her family.[4]
When Le Coz's brother found a photo of her on Twitter wearing the niqab,[4] and her parents found "things" hidden in her room,[2] they wouldn't accept her conversion and kicked her out of their home. She was 23 years old at the time.[6] Le Coz was sofa surfing with relatives and strangers whom she met on social media and later said she felt a "hatred" growing inside her while she was homeless.[4] She would later say she was looking for a "surrogate family" during this time period and "did not hate France" but was upset about her "violent rejection" from her family.[2]
ISIL recuitment and marriages
In June 2014, Le Coz had an online conversation with a man who called himself "Abu Merguez" who lived in Syria and was a jihadist recruiter. He told her that as a Muslim she risked the "flames of Jahannam" if she remained in a "country of infidels" and urged her to join ISIL. Le Coz says that at the time she had no idea ISIL was a terrorist organization.[4] She intended to get married and began looking for a husband online.[2][6] A "sister" put Le Coz in contact with Yacine Rettoun, a Moroccan ISIL fighter,[5] who promised her "a dream life" including a house with a swimming pool. They got married online, through an app.[2]
Le Coz left France to join her husband in Raqqa,[4] the capital of ISIL's recently declared caliphate in Syria, assisted by Rettoun's family.[5] She arrived in Syria in September 2014,[6] by which time she was 24 years old.[7] Rettoun was a close associate of Boubaker el Hakim, who planned attacks committed abroad.[2] Le Coz later admitted she had wanted to die "as a martyr" and had considered "blowing herself up", specifically at the Paris gay pride parade.[8][4] After moving to Syria, she became active on social media and rejoiced about terrorist attacks that took place in France in 2015.[5] She posted photos of herself posing with a Kalashnikov and other niqab-wearing women, and one photo of her husband, smiling, clad in an explosive belt.[6] She also tried to convince a woman and a minor girl to come to Syria and join ISIL.[5]
Rettoune was abusive, and kept Le Coz locked in their various homes and beat her. After six months, a Syrian judge granted the couple's divorce.[4] After the end of her first marriage, she spent some time in Fallujah, Iraq and practiced shooting with a Kalashnikov "just twice" with "two or three bullets."[5] She said she witnessed atrocities regularly under the ISIL caliphate, and had to be hospitalized in 2016 after a bombing.[4]
Le Coz's lawyer said she was forced to marry another ISIL fighter, Haroun Belfilali.[5][4] He was suspected of having been part of a battalion of snipers under ISIL.[9] In March 2017, their son was born in Syria.[10][4][5] In May 2018, Le Coz, Belifilali, and their son surrendered to Kurdish forces,[8] and were confined first in the Al-Roj refugee camp, then in a Kurdish prison, then in Ain Issa, a Kurdish camp in Syria.[10][11][12] Since the summer of 2017, Rettoune has been presumed dead. French authorities offered to repatriate Le Coz's son without his mother. Le Coz refused and said, "If he leaves, I'll leave with him."[12]