Sahra Ali Mehenni

Sahra Ali Mehenni is a French Muslim woman who, at age 17, left her home in Lézignan-Corbières and traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2014.[1] She was one of the most youngest French people known to have joined ISIL. In 2019, Sahra was repatriated to France.[2]

Life in France and departure for Syria

Sahra is one of five children in a middle-class home in a small town near Narbonne,[3] and shared a bedroom with her younger sister.[4] Her father, an industrial chemist,[5] is an Algerian Muslim born in France,[3] and her mother a French-born Catholic.[1] Her father did not attend mosque,[3] and although the family observed Ramadan, they did not follow the Ramadan fasting rules closely.[6] Sahra's mother never embraced Islam and described herself as an atheist, and she and her husband had raised their children areligiously.[3]

Sahra formally converted to Islam a year and a half before her disappearance.[7] She began to pray regularly, eventually five times a day. She ordered a jilbab through the mail and began to wear it,[8] and dropped out of school for six months, causing tension in her family.[4] Her mother disapproved of her choice to wear the veil, and Sahra called her an "infidel" who was "impure" and had no right to judge her choices. Her family forbid her to leave the house in her jilbab, afraid she'd be subject to Islamaphobic attacks.[3]

She spent a lot of time online, spending hours at a time on the computer. Her computer was in her bedroom,[9] and her family didn't pay attention to her internet activity.[6] She told her family she was talking to a boy online who was also a convert to Islam. She also spoke about news reports of the Syrian Civil War and said she would like to do humanitarian work there, but that "those young people who left to fight jihad had lost their minds."[7]

By the time she disappeared, Sahra had enrolled in a new school. Shortly before her disappearance, she asked her mother for her passport, saying she wanted to get her paperwork in order as she would soon be an adult.[4]

On March 11, 2014, she told her father she was taking some extra clothing to school to show her friends to wear the veil.[10] Her father dropped her off at the train station as he normally did so she could go to school. Instead she took a train to the airport in Marseille, flew to Istanbul, and crossed the border into Syria.[1] It was the first time she had ever ridden an airplane.[4]

Sahra called her mother over lunchtime that day and claimed to be eating with friends; she was in fact in Marseille about to board her flight to Turkey.[4] Her family did not realize anything was amiss until just before dinner, when Sahra wasn't at the train station when her father came to pick her up.[10] The next day, they noticed her passport was missing.[4] The family contacted the police, who opened a criminal investigation and seized Sahra's computer.[7]

After arrival in Syria

Three days after her departure from France, Sahra called her family and said she was fine, but refused to tell them where she was because "it wouldn't change anything." She contacted her older brother over Facebook and said she was in a village near Aleppo. She described her location as "very calm. In fact, it's like France, like home. Except the niqab is mandatory, it's so great. And we hear the call to prayer."[7]

She continued to keep in touch with her family after her arrival, by text message and phone calls, and told them she was in a "house with other sisters" and doing "nothing special." Her family said they could hear other people in the background of their phone conversations.[7] They felt she was following a script given by ISIL.[9]

Within weeks, she called her family to tell them she had married a 25-year-old Tunisian ISIL fighter she had just met, named Farid.[3] Her brother told her it was against Islamic law for a woman to marry without her father's consent, and she said her father had no say in her marriage because he was not a real Muslim.[1][4]

Her brother stated that in her messages to him in the months after her departure from France, Sahra said she missed her family and spoke little about her life in Syria.[1] She told her brother she was doing housework and taking care of children, that her life was much the same as it had been in France, that she didn't want to return, and that she wanted her mother to accept her religion, her decision to travel to Syria, and her new husband.[4][9] She sent her family photos of her husband's pickup truck and said he bought her Chanel perfume, and said that she was happy, something her brother didn't believe.[8]

Sahra's family stated they believed she had been racialized over social media.[11] Her parents said they were not sure if the Facebook messages they received from her account were actually being written by her.[4] They criticized the French government for allowing Sahra to leave the country so easily, saying, "The law needs to be changed because it's absurd that a minor can leave the country without parental permission, just with an identity card or passport."[6]

After the fall of ISIL

In 2019, ISIL was defeated at its territorial last stand at Baghuz. Sahra was detained in the camp in Ayn Issa in southeast Syria. In November that year, she was part of a mass escape from the camp with eight hundred others when Turkey launched its military offensive in the region.[2]

Sahra, two other French women who had joined ISIL, and the three women's five children surrendered to authorities in Turkey, who arranged for her repatriation to France.[2] If they had remained in Syria, they would not have been repatriated, as French citizens detained in Syrian camps are tried in Syria.[12] Under the "Cazeneuve protocol", French ISIL members who are found in Turkey are expelled from that country and repatriated to France.[2][13] A lawyer representing the women's families said they had "long wanted to return to France to face the consequences of their actions."[2]

In December, the now 23-year-old Sahra was repatriated to France 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.[2][14]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Walt, Vivienne (November 18, 2014). "Marriage and Martyrdom: How ISIS is Winning Women". Time. Retrieved March 13, 2026.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Décugis, Jean-Michel; Gautronneau, Vincent; Pham-Lê, Jérémie (2019-11-12). "Djihadistes rapatriés en France : quatre Françaises et leurs enfants sur le retour". leparisien.fr (in French). Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Heyer, Julia Amalia (2014-11-06). "France Struggles to Deal with Young Jihadist Exodus to Syria". Der Spiegel. ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i "How online jihad recruitment drew two French girls to Syria". Christian Science Monitor. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  5. ^ Malik, Kenan (2015-03-01). "A search for identity draws jihadis to the horrors of Isis". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  6. ^ a b c "Lézignan-Corbières. «Ma sœur Sarah a été enrôlée en Syrie sur les réseaux sociaux»". ladepeche.fr (in French). Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  7. ^ a b c d e "Victime d'un endoctrinement, la Lézignanaise Sahra aurait bien rejoint la Syrie". lindependant.fr (in French). Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  8. ^ a b "How to lose a child to terror | VEJA International". VEJA (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  9. ^ a b c jpulli (2014-11-10). "Rise in ISIS Participation by French Youth". The Waltonian. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  10. ^ a b "How 2 French girls were lured to jihad online". SFGate. Archived from the original on 2015-01-01. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  11. ^ "La jeune audoise, Sahra, aurait été enrôlée en Syrie sur les réseaux sociaux". France 3 Occitanie (in French). 2014-03-27. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  12. ^ "L'Audoise Sarah Ali Mehenni parmi les quatre jihadistes dangereuses rapatriées en France". midilibre.fr (in French). Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  13. ^ "Quatre femmes de jihadistes et leurs enfants renvoyés en France par la Turquie". www.cnews.fr (in French). 2019-12-09. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
  14. ^ "Une jeune djihadiste originaire de l'Aude rapatriée en France". France 3 Occitanie (in French). 2019-09-12. Retrieved 2026-03-14.
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