A Franco-Moroccan woman was given 17 years in prison by the French government for joining ISIS in Libya in 2016, and her partner was given five years in prison for their part in a criminal terrorist group.
The Special Criminal Court told Shuaib Ataf on Friday that he will have to go through judicial social monitoring for five years after he gets out of jail.
The 42-year-old suspect has been on trial since Monday on charges of being a member of a terrorist criminal organization. This is because he tried many times between 2013 and 2017 to join an ISIS recruiting work and go to areas controlled by ISIS.
Donia Bentefret, his 41-year-old girlfriend, was also tried with him and has been under court supervision since June 2022. The judge gave her five years in prison.
The court said in its decision that it “did not want her to be re-incarcerated for not putting in danger the recovery process” and that the decision was made “above all” for the benefit of the woman’s two children.
People in Ataf’s circle call him the “keyboard jihadist.” He joined radical groups a long time ago and is now a member of ISIS. He was kicked out of Syria in 2014, so he went to Libya, where the terrorist group wanted to grow. Until December 2016, they held the city of Sirte in the north and a lot of the coast on the east.
He quietly locked up his partner and their two young children for months in places that were not safe, mostly moving between Derna and Sabha in northwest Libya, where there was a war going on.
Ataf and his family were arrested in May 2017 and spent two years in jails in Libya. In April 2019, they were sent back to Egypt, and the next month, they were sent back to France.
During his hearing, Shoaib Ataf said that he did not fight and that he did not like ISIS.
