When Tooba Gondal, Britain’s notorious “Isis matchmaker”, callously celebrated the November 2015 Paris attacks, she couldn’t have possibly known that her destiny was to return to that great city as a resident of its penal system. Last December, Gondal was sentenced in Paris to 10 years’ imprisonment for Isis-related terrorism offences. “Burn Paris burn”, she had tweeted at the time.
The last time Gondal, who was born in Paris but spent most of her life in Britain, was in the news was in October 2022, when The Sunday Times reported on her impending trial in France. But her imprisonment seems to have gone unreported both in this country and in France. I only found out about it recently after idly googling Gondal’s name — as one on occasion does in my game — and there it was in a rather dreary and matter-of-fact diary report of the Musée-mémorial du terrorisme, which was created in 2018 to honour the memory of France’s terror victims.
The report records the following. Gondal’s trial was held from 1 to 5 December 2023. The prosecution requested a sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment, highlighting Gondal’s “role as an influencer in the service of Isis”, her “apology for acts of terrorism, including those of 13 November 2015 in France, as well as the carrying and handling of weapons of war”. Gondal’s defence, led by Marie Dosé, a prominent French attorney who has represented several other female Isis returnees, argued that the prosecution lacked the evidence for its claims and insisted that Gondal, from the birth of her first child, had wanted to “escape the grip of Isis”.
On the last day of the trial, the president of the court asked if Gondal had anything to say before giving its verdict. “This trial means a lot to me. I apologise,” she responded, striking a tone of respectful humility. As the diary report concludes: “The court delivered its verdict at the end of the afternoon, 10 years’ of criminal imprisonment with a security period of two or three years, with socio-judicial monitoring and a requirement for care.”
Gondal’s imprisonment marks the end of a mad sojourn which started in January 2015. Gondal, then 21, quit her university studies at Goldsmiths, relocated to Raqqa, Syria, became a recruiter for Isis, bore two children, married and widowed three times, got grazed between the eyes by an exploding bullet, earned an exclusion order from the UK, survived Isis’s defeat at Baghuz, surrendered to the Syrian Democratic Forces, starred in a documentary about her life, and fled Kurdish-administered captivity after her detention camp was bombed by Turkey. She was eventually recaptured by Turkish forces and deported to France with her two boys in November 2019.
There will be many for whom Gondal’s 10-year prison term will be woefully inadequate. This is because of the scope and gravity of Isis’s many crimes, including the genocide perpetrated against the Yazidis, and the role that Isis women played in those crimes. Yet Gondal’s sentence is scarcely a lenient one and exceeds the average prison sentence given to French Isis returnees, which, according to researcher Sofia Koller, is six years and eight months. It also substantially exceeds the average prison sentence for female Isis returnees in Germany, which is three years and 10 months. And it’s a considerably more punitive sentence than the one handed down to the only other British female Isis returnee who has faced justice: Tareena Shakil, who is now reportedly an aspiring fashion influencer, after being jailed for six years in February 2016.
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