Jonathan Jeffrey and his wife, Latifa Shadley, both 40, are in court charged with participating in a terrorist criminal association.
Jeffrey, the only accused, is under arrest, while his wife and mother are still divorced under judicial supervision. Jeffrey has become a valuable source of information for the French authorities since his arrest six years ago.
After he himself contacted the French domestic intelligence services in November 2016, he was captured by the Free Syrian Army in early 2017, while he was trying to flee Syria with his wife and their son.
After he was extradited to France in September 2017, he revealed to investigators that ISIS was planning to send children of soldiers – the so-called “cubs of the caliphate” – to Europe to “carry out suicide operations there.”
According to Jonathan Jeffrey, the organization was also planning to “spread terror in the French countryside” and “target a French nuclear power plant.” He also provided the names of dozens of French people who joined the terrorist organization.
Jeffrey, who hails from Toulouse (south), had gone to Syria and joined the ranks of ISIS in February 2015 with his wife, Latifa Chadli, and their first child, who was only two months old at the time, and he is a civil party in the trial of his parents by an association.
“I won’t wear the niqab anymore. I don’t want to depend on anyone anymore,” Latifa Shadly, with loose brown hair, told the court.
The couple is also on trial for abandoning their family for going to Syria in February 2015 when their first child was only two months old.
They had a second child, who was born in Turkey in June 2017, four months after they were arrested by the Free Syrian Army while trying to flee Syria.
The “Free Syrian Army” is a designation used to refer to the armed opposition factions that fought the Syrian army during the first years of the conflict before it dispersed.
Denise B., the 59-year-old mother of Jeffrey, an evangelical Christian, is also appearing in court, accused of financing a terrorist organization for sending thousands of euros to her son while he was in Syria.
“I was helping my son, not the fighter,” Denise told the court.
Who is Jonathan Jeffrey?
- Jonathan Jeffrey converted to Islam in 2007 and quickly became radicalized, particularly by visiting the Basso Cambo mosque in Toulouse’s Mirai district, which has seen the rise of many militants.
- In Syria, Jonathan Jeffrey served in the ranks of the Anwar al-Awlaki battalion affiliated with ISIS, which included a few dozen Frenchmen, including the two brothers Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain, also from Toulouse, who were propaganda officials in the extremist organization and claimed the attacks of November 13, 2015 in France.
- Likewise, Jeffrey fought in Ramadi in Iraq in the ranks of the “Tariq bin Ziyad” battalion, which was established by Abd al-Ilah Hamish (one of the French fighters in the organization known as Abu Suleiman al-Fransi), which included the Bataclan attackers.
Jonathan Jeffrey and Latifa Shadley face thirty years in prison, while Denise B. Ten years in prison.
The trial is expected to continue until January 23.
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