PARIS (AP) — Two women followers of the Islamic State group are being prosecuted in France over allegations that they plotted blowing up a vehicle near Notre Dame Cathedral in 2016.The plot failed when the fuel cans never exploded, and no one was hurt.
However, the women had been recruited by one of France’s most notorious jihadists and the police claim that the explosion in September 2016, long before the fire that damaged the famous medieval cathedral this year_ would have killed dozens of people, in one of France’s most cherished and touristy neighborhoods.The two women, who could be sentenced to life in prison, seemed taciturn at the start of the trial at the Paris counterterrorism court. There are six other people prosecuted for related charges. Lawyer Thibault de Montbrial, representing the French police and an association of victims of terrorism, called the trial of the first major process related to the attacks in France in 2015-2016, which shook the country and hardened public opinion on security issues. The trial “exposes the role _ sometimes unknown, underestimated and even denied by some _ of women in radicalization, fanaticism and the ability to carry out a terrorist act.” Ines Madani, now 22, is considered one of the culprits. She was just a teenager when she and Ornella Gilligmann joined a channel on the social network Telegram run by the French jihadist Rachid Kassim, according to court documents. The prosecution contends that Kassim was a central figure in the conscription of Islamic State in France and that he was involved in the horrific attack on a French priest at his home in Normandy, and in the murder of a French couple in front of his young son. Kassim moved to Syria in 2015 and in the summer of 2016 intensified his threats on social media and even released a manual on how to commit terrorist attacks. Among his recommendations were massive stabbings or “filling a vehicle with gas cylinders and spraying it with gasoline.” According to the prosecution, Madani and Gilligmann tried to do that after sending Him to Kassim, in which they swore allegiance to the Islamic State.On September 4, 2016, they parked a Peugeot with six gas cylinders near Notre Dame, sprayed it with gasoline and tried light a fire, but the spark never burned.
