Amandine Le Coz

Le Coz is originally from Domont in Val-d'Oise. She had dyslexia, She was the youngest of three children, 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. ==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. 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. 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. ==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. Rettoun was a close associate of Boubaker el Hakim, who planned attacks committed abroad. In March 2017, their son was born in Syria. 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." == After defeat of ISIL ==

In 2019, ISIL was defeated at its territorial last stand at Baghuz. Le Coz was part of a mass escape from Ain Issa with eight hundred others when Turkey launched its military offensive in the region. Under the "Cazeneuve protocol", French ISIL members who are found in Turkey are expelled from that country and repatriated to France to face trial. A lawyer representing the repatriated women's families said they had "long wanted to return to France to face the consequences of their actions." Le Coz was one of the first French citizens returned to France under the Cazeneuve protocol. She was ultimately detained in the radicalization prevention unit in Ille-et-Vilaine in Rennes. In 2023, Her parents said she had made considerable improvements there and she was getting a vocational diploma in cosmetology with plans to become a makeup artist. In March 2023, Le Coz she put on trial for joining ISIL. Her trial lasted two days. During her trial she said she had wanted to leave from the very beginning of her stay in ISIL territory, but the prosecutor characterized her as "a very proactive woman" and argued she must have had multiple opportunities to leave between her arrival in 2014 and her surrender to the Kurds in 2018. Le Coz admitted being uncommitted in her desire to leave the ISIL caliphate, saying, "One minute I wanted to leave, the next I wanted to stay, I was all over the place. On one hand, I was afraid of being an unbeliever and going to hell; on the other, I wanted to be with my family again." She said she was "pro-jihadist until I had my child." Her son's birth, she said, was the end of "those deadly thoughts." The prosecutor asked if she had put the explosive belt on her husband before he had posed for the photo she posted online, and Le Coz said, "No, but I've worn one before. To die a martyr. I thought it was the best form of worship." When asked about the two people she had tried to convince to come to Syria, Le Coz sobbed and said she was "ashamed" and that the girls could have been "beaten, raped, killed" because of her. Le Coz was convicted of being part of a criminal terrorist conspiracy and sentenced to ten years in prison, with a two-thirds minimum term and seven years of post-release supervision. When she appeared in court at sentencing, she was not covering her hair. The judge asked if she understood and she said her attorney would explain it to her. She asked to be allowed to remain at the radicalization prevention unit in Rennes, where she said she was "learning to think for herself" but said she was "not ready to get out" and would "always" believe in the flames of hell. She told the court that it was because of her consideration for her son's future that she had surrendered to the Kurds in 2018. As of March 2023, her son was still in foster care, and Le Coz hopes to regain custody. == See also ==