The defendant had notably revealed to the French authorities that the EI planned to send child soldiers to Europe “to carry out suicide operations there”.
He is the most talkative of the former Islamic State (IS) jihadists. The Toulousain Jonathan Geffroy, judged from this Monday by the special Assize Court of Paris alongside his wife and his mother, has proved to be a valuable source of information since his arrest six years ago.
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Captured in early 2017 by the Free Syrian Army (ASL) while trying to flee Syria with his wife and two children (one of whom was born in Turkey in June 2017 after the couple’s arrest), handed over to the authorities French in September of the same year, this 40-year-old man spoke a lot to the investigators.
IS is reportedly considering ‘single killings in the countryside’
The Toulousain revealed in particular that the EI planned to send child soldiers – the “caliphate lion cubs” – in Europe “to carry out suicide operations“. According to Jonathan Geffroy, IS also planned to “sow terror in the French countryside“by committing”multiple isolated murders in the countryside“. IS also wantedtarget a French nuclear power plant“, entrusted to the investigators the ex-jihadist. He also gave the names of dozens of French people who joined the Islamist organization.
Tried for association of terrorist criminals (AMT), Jonathan Geffroy presents himself today as a “repented“. But prison evaluation reports note that he still adheres “to a very rigorous vision of Islam, advocating the separation of men and women during festivals and meals, preferring a woman wearing the jilbab or the niqab and listening to no music other than anasheeds (religious songs), music being linked to pleasure“. In a letter seized by justice in April 2021, Jonathan Geffroy strongly criticized his wife for her dress which no longer included a veil. It makes me “have nightmares“, he wrote.
Jonathan Geffroy had joined Syria and the ranks of IS in February 2015 with his Moroccan wife Latifa Chadli, – who is appearing free under judicial supervision also for AMT – and their first child, then only two months old, a civil party in the trial of his parents through the association SOS Victimes 93.
Jonathan Geffroy’s mother, Denise P., 59, also appeared free, under judicial supervision, for “financing of terrorismafter having sent several thousand euros to his son when he was in the Iraqi-Syrian zone.
Friend of Abdelkader Merah
Converted to Islam in 2007, Jonathan Geffroy quickly became radicalized, making his first trip to Egypt in 2008. From that date, he made regular trips to this country where he notably met Abdelkader Merah, Mohamed’s brother Merah – assassin, in 2012 in Toulouse and Montauban, of three soldiers, three Jewish children and a teacher. During his hearings, Jonathan Geffroy admitted to having briefly hosted Mohamed Merah during a stay in Egypt in 2010.
In 2013, he moved to Morocco with his first wife whom he left to marry Latifa Chadli, now 40 years old. The couple left the kingdom to settle in Egypt in February 2014 and already Jonathan Geffroy is thinking of joining Syria “in order to live in a land of Islam on which the sharia was applied“.
Despite the birth of a child in November 2014, Jonathan Geffroy and Latifa Chadli joined Syria in February 2015 where they were immediately taken in charge by IS. Jonathan Geffroy serves in the ranks of the katiba (brigade) Anwar al-Awlaki, a detachment of the EI grouping together a few dozen French people including the brothers Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain, also from Toulouse, two responsible for the propaganda of the IS, which will claim responsibility for the attacks of November 13, 2015 in France.
The man would like to open “a lingerie shop” in Morocco
He will also fight in Ramadi in Iraq in the ranks of the elite katiba Tariq Ibn Zyad, a brigade created by Abdelilah Himich (one of the most senior French fighters in IS, known under the war name of Abou Souleymane al-Faransi, the Frenchman) to which the Bataclan attackers belonged.
Jonathan Geffroy who would like tostart a new life” in Morocco where he plans to open “a lingerie shopwith his wife faces 30 years in prison. Latifa Chadli faces the same sentence and Denise P. 10 years in prison. The trial is scheduled until January 23.