“She must have a second chance”: Emilie König’s mother “relieved” of her daughter’s return to France

Repatriated this Tuesday from Syria, the jihadist Émilie König was imprisoned upon her arrival in France. Her daughter has been detained in the Roj camp in northern Syria for five years. Tuesday July 5, the Breton jihadist Émilie König finally returned to France, with 15 other women and 35 minors. She who had joined the Islamic State (IS) in 2012 is accused of having recruited for the terrorist group and called to commit attacks in the West. As soon as she arrived, this mother of five children was placed in pre-trial detention after being indicted by an anti-terrorism judge. Asked by our colleagues from Ouest France, the mother of this 37-year-old jihadist said she was “relieved” of her daughter’s return to France. “She will be condemned and it is normal that she pays her debt” , she added. Today, however, Emilie König’s mother believes that her daughter has “returned to her normal state” and that she “supports her” even if she “cannot do anything”. “Émilie must have a second chance, especially since she has returned to her normal state. […] She deradicalized herself”, she says. Broken familyLeaving Lorient, Émilie König left behind her two sons, entrusted to her mother. Now aged 15 and 17, they have were then placed in foster care, their grandmother then being unable to take care of them for health reasons. “I am also the grandmother of Émilie’s three other children”, recalls the mother In fact, in Syria, her daughter had a boy and twin girls from two different fathers.Arrived in France in January 2021, the three children had also been placed in foster families.BlacklistRegularly appeared in propaganda videos , she had been placed by the UN on its blacklist of the most dangerous fighters.In one of them, posted online in 2013, she poses with a rifle, as if she were practicing shooting. of intelligence had intercepted his recurring calls to attack French institutions or attack women soldiers. French ts. Émilie König was finally captured by Kurdish forces in 2017 in Chadadi in eastern Syria. In an interview with AFP in April 2021 from the Roj camp, she said she wanted to “return to France”. want to see my children again, I would like France to be conciliatory about that. I want to make up for my mistakes”, insisted Émilie König. “Of course I’m sorry, because it destroyed my whole life,” she said of joining IS, while assuring that she didn’t want to be incarcerated. “I don’t see why I would go to prison. I think it’s unfair because I didn’t do anything, I have no blood on my hands,” she insisted.