Nora el-Bahty is a French Muslim woman who, at age 15, left her home in Avignon to join the Syrian civil war in 2014. [1] Three French people were convicted in her case. [2]
Nora el-Bahty is the third of six children, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants. [3] Her parents were practicing Muslims. [1] Prior to her disappearance, she had talked about helping the wounded people in Syria. She had also asked her parents for her passport, saying she had lost her identity card. No one her family suspected she was planning to go to Syria, however. [1]
On January 23, 2014, [3] she did not return home after school. Instead she withdrew money from her saving's account, changed her mobile phone, and traveled to Paris [1] to meet Zoé Bouah, a woman she had been in touch with online. Bouah's husband, Mouhammad Diallo, was already in Syria, [4] having traveled there in 2013 to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. [5] Bouah put Nora up in her home overnight, gave her food and a full face veil, [4] and promised to travel with her the next day. [1]
Bouah's sister-in law, Sonia Mareghni, was also at her home that night; she later said she was helping look after Bouah's children. [4] Mareghni helped Nora search online for a plane ticket to Turkey, then lent Nora her credit card to pay for it, but the charge would not go through. The next day, Mareghni and Bouah accompanied Nora to a travel agency and Mareghni helped pay for Nora's ticket. [4] The women accompanied Nora to Orly Airport. [4] Bouah decided not to join her on her trip after all. [1]
El-Bahty flew to Istanbul, then took a second flight to the Syrian border. Her destination was a brigade of foreign fighters run by Omar Diaby. [6]
Nora's parents reported her missing, and her brother, Fouad, questioned her friends. The family discovered she had opened a second Facebook account where she was in contact with Paris-area jihadist recruiters, and had a second mobile phone to call them. [1]
Three days after her arrival in Syria, Nora called her family and said she was fine and didn't want to return. Her parents received two further phone calls, from a man asking their permission for her to marry. They refused. [1] Nora texted Fouad to say she was in Aleppo. He decided to go to Syria to find her, but was turned back at the Turkish border. [1] Diaby eventually called Fouad himself and said Nora was safe, not being held against her will, and wanted to remain in Syria. [1] [7]
At first, Nora spoke to Fouad several times a day. He said there was a woman who was with her and telling her what to say. By mid-March, Nora said she wanted to return home. [3] That same month, Nora's father and Fouad went to Syria and made their case before a sharia judge there, who said they could have Nora on the condition that they stayed in Syria to settle. Nora's father and brother returned to France without her. [5]
In May, Fouad was permitted to visit his sister in Syria and said she was living in a house with several other women and children. Diaby took Fouad to Nora's house and told her he loved her and that he was the reason she had remained unmarried. [6] Fouad described his sister as "thin and sick" and said she wept and told him, "I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life." [1] Nora told Fouad she had gone to Syria because she felt it was her duty to help suffering Muslims, but upon his arrival she was told she would not be permitted to leave. [3] When he suggested they go home together, she said, "I can't". Fouad said he felt she wanted to return and Diaby was stopping her. [6]
In November 2017, Bouah, Diallo and Mareghni were put on trial for facilitating Nora's disappearance. [4] Bouah testified that Nora was very determined to go and they were unable to talk her out of it. [4] Bouah was sentenced to five years in prison for child abduction and conspiracy related to a terrorist enterprise, and Mareghni to three years. [8] They were also ordered to pay €100,000 in damages to the el-Bahty family. [9] Diallo, whom the prosecution alleged was the primary facilitator of Nora's journey into jihadist-controlled territory, [4] was sentenced to twelve years in prison for terrorist criminal association. [10]
Mareghni and Diallo were the first women in French history to be convicted of such acts. In 2018, the women's sentences were reduced on appeal, and the amount of damages they had to pay Nora's family was reduced to €15,000. [2]
By September 2018, Nora was reported to be living with her child in Idlib, having been married three times to three different men. [5]