“I practice a moderate Islam”: the Nîmes resident “Sweet scar”, the chaotic journey of a radicalized person involved in the Paty affair

La Nîmoise comparaît libre et conteste les faits qui lui sont reprochés. Midi Libre – Yan.Phi.

The life of the accused Priscilla Mangel, a Nîmes resident suspected of having stirred up hatred for Samuel Paty's killer on October 16, 2020, was examined closely by the special assize court in Paris on Wednesday, December 11. She faces 30 years in prison for terrorist criminal association, which she denies. The verdict in the trial, where seven other people are being tried, is expected on December 20.

How did Priscilla Mangel, 36, from Nîmes, find herself recruited into the radical Islamist movement, according to anti-terrorist investigators, when the accused promised, on the contrary, before the assizes, that her practice of religion was simply “moderate” ?

Nicknamed Cicatrice sucrée on social networks, she grew up in the suburbs of Paris, in a middle-class, atheist family of Christian origin. But she converted to Islam at a very young age, at the age of 16, after researching on the internet and reading books about religion at home.

Converted to Islam at 16

“I started to join, some aspects interested me, the spiritual side, rules to follow, a framework for life, the place of women, which also attracted me”, she says.

But her mother Elisabeth, an accounting secretary, explained that her daughter had met an Algerian, Yacine B., at school, who had encouraged her to convert, which she hid from her parents. She then took the name Hasna and changed her eating and dressing habits, including wearing a headscarf, which led to her dropping out of school.

“No, I had already dropped out, I was bored”, she contradicted in court.

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Her mother and father tried to oppose this relationship. Alas: she got married religiously without informing them, she moved in with Yacine B., had two children and left for Algeria. But she returned to France, upset because Yacine B. had taken a second wife, returning to her parents before joining the Gard, in 2017, where she had family ties.

Her father, Philippe, a cable installer, recounted the dismay of a family overwhelmed by a daughter who began wearing the hijab permanently and accused Yacine B. of having “destroyed the future” of their offspring. The family avoided talking about religion, but also about the Charlie Hebdo attacks or the caricatures of the Prophet, in order to avoid tensions.

Remarried to a radicalized person

“When she converted, her parents asked for help from social services, but the institutions did not help them”, deplores Catherine Szwarc, civil party in the trial for the victims of the attack.

Priscilla Mangel was not “more peaceful”upon returning from Algeria, as her parents thought. Frequenting social networks a lot, on several accounts and under the pseudonyms Hasna Al Andalousia, Lilly Chamallow or Sarah Spencer, she tried to marry men claiming their attachment to the terrorist group Islamic State.

Which she managed to do, religiously and by telephone, at the end of October 2017, with Sami Gharouz, then incarcerated in Lille. The latter was then sentenced, in September 2020, to 14 years of criminal imprisonment for terrorist criminal association.

Nicknamed “Abou Bimboum”, he had been arrested in connection with the case of Sara Z. and Thomas Sauret, a young couple from Montpellier arrested in Jacou (Hérault) with explosives and who were planning an attack on the Eiffel Tower.

Close to the mother of a suicide bomber in the attacks of November 13, 2015

Gharouz was part of the Marseille side of the case, contesting another planned attack, claiming, without convincing the assize court, that these were robberies.

Priscilla Mangel's bank accounts also reported transfers, as early as 2016, to the sister of two individuals under surveillance for their membership in the radical Islamist movement.
She was close to the mother of a suicide bomber in the attacks of November 13, 2015 and other shady profiles.

“But I do not adhere to the Islamic State, I do not condone their exactions. Going to a country at war would be pure madness” she assures.

According to investigators, Priscilla Mangel took part in calligraphy groups online, defending “a patriarchal Islam where women must be submissive to men”, non-Muslims being “infidels.”

The accused never worked, unsuccessfully following a sewing course after dropping out of school. “Today, I would like to study the history of Muslim civilization across the Mediterranean.”

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