The National Court proposes to try the two wives of jihadists repatriated from Syria

Santiago Pedraz, investigating magistrate of the National Court, proposed this Thursday to try the Spanish Yolanda Martínez and Luna Fernández, the two wives of jihadists repatriated a year ago from northern Syria with the 13 children they had, for integration into a terrorist organization. his position (nine of them, his biological children). The judge, who has decided to keep them in provisional prison, has concluded that both women joined the Islamic State (ISIS), that they collaborated with the terrorist network in Spain and that they left for the Asian country in 2014 with their husbands, after the proclamation of the pseudo-caliphate of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

EL PAÍS located the two in 2019 in the Syrian camp of Al Hol. They had survived the collapse of the caliphate and, from the detention center controlled by the Kurdish militias, they demanded that the Spanish authorities remove them from there and take them back to their country: “The only thing we want is to get out of here. “They cannot condemn us for taking care of the house and our children in the Islamic State,” they told this newspaper. Like other European governments, the Executive of Pedro Sánchez undertook the steps for repatriation and, after four years, it materialized at the beginning of 2023: in January, the two accused landed at the Torrejón de Ardoz military base (Madrid) together to the 13 children.

After his arrival in Spain, Judge Pedraz ordered his immediate provisional entry into prison. Suspicions hung over them. In fact, the repatriation operation had been delayed after encountering reluctance from the anti-terrorist forces. As EL PAÍS revealed, the two had links with the Al Andalus Brigade, a jihadist cell dismantled in 2014. Martínez is married to Omar El Harchi, a Moroccan from Ceuta who became a Spanish national who was placed in a Kurdish prison last year and who, According to the investigations of the National Court, he worked as a recruiter for Al Andalus before leaving for Syria — in addition, the agents found a letter supposedly sent by Martínez to the wife of another Islamist where he “encouraged” her to travel to that country: “Ante “The Syrian conflict must not remain static, but must take action.”

For her part, Luna Fernández is the widow of Mohamed Amin El Aabou, another key player in Al Andalus. According to the Court, El Aabou was part of the “operational core”, assuming tasks of selection, indoctrination, integration of new members and financing – although, like El Harchi, he was not tried because he left for Syria with his family before for the cell to be dismantled. According to the agents, Fernández had a “leader” role among the wives of the members of said group, aware of the extremism of their partners.

“Those investigated always showed their willingness to be members of Daesh,” Pedraz details in his resolution this Thursday, where he adds: “By moving to the Syrian-Iraqi conflict zone together with their husbands, sharing and accepting the same fate as them. , [acudieron] with the full will to be part of the aforementioned terrorist organization and the purpose of making all their capacity available in the functions that the organization itself assigned to them, no matter how basic they were.

Along these lines, the magistrate recalls that women “play a fundamental role” within ISIS, since “they are the guarantee of long-term success of its project of conquest and consolidation of territory, which rests on the settlement and multiplication of its population”. “Therefore, the main role that the self-proclaimed Islamic State assigns to women is the domestic one, represented especially in raising children: the future generation of fighters. In addition, they play an active and essential role within the function of propaganda and recruitment, recruiting and assisting other women to join.”

This function, according to the summary, was reproduced by Fernández and Martínez in Syria: “They have carried out all the behavioral patterns expected of women integrated into the [ISIS]”. The judge emphasizes that they carried out “indoctrination work” with their children and with the other minors in their care. Also, “regarding their roles as wives”: “While one helped and supported the activity of her husband, a member of a jihadist court within the Islamic State, the other helped and supported the activity of her husband, a combatant in the ranks of Daesh. ”.

To reinforce his thesis, the magistrate emphasizes that the two women only wanted to return to Spain after the fall of the caliphate. The Government planned to bring two other women and four other minors who were in the same situation: Lubna Miludi and Loubna Fares, the latter of Moroccan nationality, but with children of a Spanish jihadist. But the authorities were unable to communicate with them when the repatriation took place, as reported at the time.

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