Yolanda Martínez, 38, was married to jihadist Omar El Harchi, with whom she had five children. Luna Fernández, 37, married Mohamed El Amin Aabou, also a radicalized Muslim. In 2014, they traveled to Syria to join their husbands, who were fighting in the ranks of Daesh and died in combat. They ended up in a concentration camp in Syria, where they spent four years until their repatriation. On Monday, they were released, with precautionary measures, and face six years in prison for belonging to the Islamic State. Are they really terrorists or just women in love with their partner? Related news standard No The National Court releases the two wives of jihadists repatriated from Syria ABC The magistrates examine the request of the prosecution and the defense because they do not appreciate the risk of flight Luna Fernández and Yolanda Martínez were rescued in January 2023 d a Camp for Syrian “refugees” in which they were interned with their children in inhumane conditions, and imprisoned upon their arrival in Spain. For their families, if they went to this country with their husbands to join the jihad, they were cheated; The prosecution does not think the same thing and accuses them of belonging to a terrorist organization. They, for the moment, are breathing; but its judicial horizon is worrying. When, on January 12 last year, the relatives of these two women appeared at a press conference to explain the conditions in which they and their children had been living for four years, the impact on public opinion was great. “I spoke to him every week,” said the mother of Yolanda Martínez, born in the Madrid district of Salamanca. He told me that they lived in a plastic tent, with an outside temperature of over 50 degrees in summer, and also below zero in winter… Of course, it leaked when it rained, and the cold was so intense that the clothes He was covered in ice. They caught scorpions, snakes, the water they drank was contaminated and they barely had food… They didn’t have any medicine either, so when one day she passed out, no one didn’t take care of her… She also had episodes of anxiety. “A “correctional” That, his daughter, but his grandchildren also went through ordeals that no child would ever have to experience: “One night, my child went out to urinate, a soldier saw him and taken to a tent guarded by soldiers. I was 13 years old then and it was a prison”, in a word, a “correctional establishment”. A year and a half before his transfer to Madrid, he was separated from his mother: “He experienced the attacks at the bomb, the arrest of her father… It’s not an easy life”, lamented her grandmother Manuela Grande, Luna’s mother. For her part, she explained that her daughter “tried to leave her husband and to return to Spain with the children, but this was impossible because there women cannot do anything alone. It was until her death. Why are they going to condemn her? “During these four years, I also lost a granddaughter, who died of a heart problem for which she was not treated”, a- he added. Standard Related News Yes The horror of the wives of jihadists and their repatriated children Pablo Muñoz The parents of Yolanda Martínez and Luna Fernández blame the abandonment of the “progressive government” for four years and talk about the living conditions. extremely harsh treatment of their daughters and grandchildren, some complaining of having been put in prison as soon as they got off the plane. brought them to Spain with their nine children and four other orphaned children in her care, “simply because they were married”. They are just housewives who take care of the children… They talk about my daughter without knowing her feelings, without knowing what she looks like. “He was always sensitive to the poor, even though he was born in the Salamanca neighborhood.” “They are Muslims, not terrorists or jihadists,” Yolanda’s relative stressed. With the case thus presented, everything suggested that, in accordance with the theses of the two lawyers, they would soon regain their freedom. But there was an important problem: the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz did not believe them when, upon their arrival in Spain, they told him that they only followed their husbands and devoted themselves to taking care of the children. “Yolanda Martínez shared her husband’s ideology, agreeing not to remain static in the face of the Syrian conflict and to act,” wrote the judge of the National Court, who also underlined what, according to him, was an “unbreakable commitment” with Daesh. : its permanence in the jihad zone until the fall of its last bastion in Baguz. LeadershipAs for Luna Fernández, she converted to Islam, according to the magistrate in which she had exercised leadership of the women’s faction of the Al Andalus Brigade before her companions: “They were there. responsible for helping girls convert. Additionally, three of the four children they cared for in the “refugee” camp were the product of the marriage of a Moroccan woman named Hanae Draoui and a Spanish jihadist identified as Mohamed El Ouriachi. This couple also maintained strong links with the Al Andalus Brigade, which, in the eyes of the National Court, is additional proof of the relationship of the two women with this jihadist cell dismantled in 2014 by the General Information Commission (CGI) of the police. news Over the past 20 months, nothing has been revealed about these women, let alone their children. However, on the 12th, the indictment from the national prosecutor asked them for six years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization. In this letter, the public prosecutor, in accordance with Pedraz’s orders, insisted on his alleged links with the aforementioned Al Andalus Brigade and declared that Martínez would have played an “important role” in the recruitment of members of this cell while Fernández “exercised his activities “. leadership within the women’s group. » The indictment also explains that the two women voluntarily went to Syria between 2014 and 2015 with their husbands, Omar El Harchi and Mohamed Amin El Aabou, both members of the Al Andalus Brigade, to settle in the new proclaimed pseudocaliphate of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. With this decision, according to the prosecution, they shared and accepted the “same destiny” as their partners. In fact, they remained there until the defeat of the Islamic State and its loss of control over the territory. They were then detained and transferred to the Kurdish-controlled Al Hol refugee camp, where they were located in 2019 by an El País journalist, who interviewed them. This is precisely one of Yolanda Martínez’s answers, in which she explains that Daesh. provided her husband with a home and a job in the Islamic State courts, which is considered by the prosecutor’s office as one of the evidence against her. The public prosecutor recalls that these types of advantages were only granted to those who were part of the organization. For her part, Luna Fernández declared that, just as “many countries make their laws, Allah made a law and he knows, we do not know…”, words which, according to the public accusation, reflect ” the internalization of a radical and extremist vision of Islam, where Sharia (Islamic law) prevails over country legislation. “No schooling”. Furthermore, the prosecutor specifies that the children of the accused have never been to school; Additionally, adults have been indoctrinated by the Islamic State, as stated by the children themselves, who also claim that at home their mothers taught them their view of Islam. A police report included in the document states that ISIS forced boys between 6 and 18 years old and girls between 6 and 15 years old to attend schools where the only subject was religion. After indoctrination, boys could be spies, recruiters, soldiers, executioners or suicides, while girls were expected to devote themselves to the home. “Their role is not to educate a child, like any parent anywhere in the world, but rather to do so following the directives of Daesh,” the document states. Finally, the prosecution maintains that the two accused have always displayed their desire to belong to Daesh.
