A Montreal woman was handed a one-day sentence on Monday after admitting she traveled to Syria in 2014 to join the Islamic State.
Oumaima Chouay is the first of several Canadian women who were captured in Syria during the war against ISIS to be convicted of terrorism.
Chouay admitted to participating in the activities of a terrorist group. The Crown dismissed three other terrorism charges against her.
She must serve a single day in custody, in addition to the 110 days she was held before trial. She will also be on probation for three years.
“Ms. Chouay is the first person convicted for providing support to a terrorist entity through family support as a spouse,” the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said in a statement.
The sentence reflected her steps “to demonstrate remorse, take responsibility, commit to fundamental change and a rejection of extremist ideology,” said Public Prosecution director George Dolhai.
In a joint statement of facts, Chouay said she left Canada for Turkey in October 2014 and crossed into Syria with the aim of joining ISIS.
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Less than a month later, she married Dominic Alexander Reitz, a German citizen “who was also a member of the Islamic State,” according to the document.
She initially lived in Mosul, Iraq, where ISIS gave her a house. Her husband also received an allowance from the terrorist group.
On Feb. 2, 2015, Chouay made the ISIS flag her Facebook profile picture. She then changed it to a photo of a woman in a niqab handling a firearm.
Around this time, she reconnected on Facebook with her Canadian friends and confided that she was living in ISIS-controlled territory.
She told them she had “no intention of returning to a country of kuffars,” according to the statement, using the Arabic term for non-believers and infidels.
Chouay then moved to Tel Afar, Iraq, where ISIS gave her a new home that had been taken from Shiites, who opposed the Islamic State.
Just over a year after joining ISIS, Chouay gave birth to her first child with Reitz. She returned to Mosul and then returned to Syria.
As ISIS began to lose ground to Kurdish fighters backed by an international coalition, Chouay told her mother she wanted to leave, the document said.
She was captured by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in November 2017 after trying to flee ISIS territory. She then gave birth to a second child. The Canadian government flew her home in October 2022.
She was arrested upon her arrival and charged with four terrorism offences.
Two other women brought back to Canada from camps for ISIS captives, B.C. resident Kimberly Polman and Ontario’s Ammara Ahmad, have also been charged and are awaiting trial.
The rest have not been charged, although most were placed on terrorism peace bonds that imposed restrictions on them in the name of public safety.
The preamble of the joint statement of facts in the case described what it called the “distinct” role women played in ISIS before its collapse in Syria in 2019.
While men joined “with the goal of becoming fighters,” women were expected to take part in security, defense, fundraising and propaganda, it said.
“One of the main roles of women in the caliphate, generally described by the Islamic State as supporting their fighting husbands, is to ensure and maintain morality and religious faith at home, as well as to raise and educate their children under the values of the Islamic State in order to create the next generation of fighters,” the statement said.
“The presence of women in the territories conquered by the Islamic State also allows this terrorist group to increase its capacity to recruit men. The contribution of women is essential to achieve the ultimate goal of this terrorist group: to create an Islamic state.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
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