Amandine Le Coz (born 1990) is a French convert to Islam, who in 2014, left her home in France and traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In 2019, she and her toddler son were repatriated to France after spending a year and a half in a Kurdish detention camp. In 2023, Le Coz she was sentenced to ten years in prison for joining ISIL.
She was one of forty women married to ISIL jihadists who were tried and convicted of terror-related offenses in France. Le Coz was one of the first returnees from the Syrian civil war to be tried for her involvement in terrorism. Her ten-year sentence for criminal terrorist conspiracy was slightly less than the eleven-year term the prosecution requested, and one-third of the maximum thirty-year sentence.
Le Coz is originally from Domont in Val-d'Oise. She had dyslexia, and was later tested and determined to function at a low intellectual level with "significant psycho-affective immaturity", as well as a histrionic personality. She was the youngest of three children, or four and her father was an atheist while her mother had been raised a Christian. Le Coz was placed in special education after primary school, something that made her feel "stupid" and "worthless". She adopted a gothic fashion style "to shock". In sixth grade, through a friend, she discovered Islam and found it "magnificent" but did not convert at that time.
She attended a vocational high school and got a CAP (vocational certificate) in home care. She got a job as a caregiver in a retirement home, 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.
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. She formally converted at a mosque in Garges-lès-Gonesse. Afterwards she began wearing the niqab, but only when away from her family.
When Le Coz's brother found a photo of her on Twitter wearing the niqab, and her parents found "things" hidden in her room, they wouldn't accept her conversion and kicked her out of their home. She was 23 years old at the time. 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.
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. She intended to get married and began looking for a husband online. A "sister" put Le Coz in contact with Yacine Rettoun, a Moroccan ISIL fighter, who promised her "a dream life" including a house with a swimming pool. They got married online, through an app.
Le Coz left France to join her husband in Raqqa, the capital of ISIL's recently declared caliphate in Syria, assisted by Rettoun's family. She arrived in Syria in September 2014, by which time she was 24 years old. Rettoun was a close associate of Boubaker el Hakim, who planned attacks committed abroad. Le Coz later admitted she had wanted to die "as a martyr" and had considered "blowing herself up", specifically at the Paris gay pride parade. After moving to Syria, she became active on social media and rejoiced about terrorist attacks that took place in France in 2015. She posted photos of herself posing with a Kalashnikov and other niqab-wearing women, and one photo of her husband, smiling, clad in an explosive belt. She also tried to convince a woman and a minor girl to come to Syria and join ISIL.
Rettoune was abusive, and kept Le Coz locked in their various homes and beat her. After six months, a Syrian judge granted the couple's divorce. After the end of her first marriage, she spent some time in Fallujah, Iraq and practiced shooting with a Kalashnikov "just twice" with "two or three bullets." She said she witnessed atrocities regularly under the ISIL caliphate, and had to be hospitalized in 2016 after a bombing.
Le Coz's lawyer said she was forced to marry another ISIL fighter, Haroun Belfilali. He was suspected of having been part of a battalion of snipers under ISIL. In March 2017, their son was born in Syria. In May 2018, Le Coz, Belifilali, and their son surrendered to Kurdish forces, and were confined first in the Al-Roj refugee camp, then in a Kurdish prison, then in Ain Issa, a Kurdish camp 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."
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. Le Coz's lawyer later said the Turkish bombings had "forced" her to leave the camp with her son in fear of their own safety. Le Coz, two other French women who had joined ISIL, and the three women's five children surrendered to the Turkish Army at the Turkish/Syrian border, and Turkey arranged for the women's repatriation to France.
If they had remained in the camp in Syria, they would not have been repatriated, as French citizens detained in Syrian camps are left to face Syrian justice. 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 repatriated women's families said they had "long wanted to return to France to face the consequences of their actions."
Le Coz was repatriated to France in December 2019 with three other wives of French jihadists, and the women's seven children. As per the Cazeneuve protocol, on arrival the children were taken into the care of child protective services, and the women were taken into custody. 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.