Montreal woman who joined ISIS as a teen convicted of aiding a terrorist group

Oumaima Chouay, who fled her home in Montreal nearly a decade ago to join ISIS in Syria, is the first person in Canada convicted for providing family support to a terrorist entity as a spouse. 

Chouay was sentenced Monday to one day of custody, in addition to the 110 days she served in pretrial detention, according to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC). The 29-year-old also received a three-year probation order. 

The sentence was a joint recommendation from the Crown prosecution and Chouay’s lawyer, Dominique Shoofey. 

PPSC director George Dolhai said in a statement that the sentence reflected the steps “Ms. Chouay has taken to demonstrate remorse, take responsibility, commit to fundamental change and a rejection of extremist ideology.”

Reached by phone Monday evening, Shoofey declined a request for an interview. 

Chouay was one of several Canadian women repatriated by Global Affairs in 2022 from two detention camps in northern Syria for the wives and children of ISIS fighters.

She and another other woman, Kimberly Polman, who lives in British Columbia, were arrested by the RCMP as soon as they disembarked from their respective planes. 

Polman is awaiting trial for a charge of leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group, and one of participating in the activity of a terrorist group.

Chouay was accompanied at the time by her two daughters, now aged nine and seven, who were born in Syria, according to La Presse.

Facing justice in Canada

Chouay’s sentencing marks the end of a more than 10-year ordeal outlined in an agreed statement of facts filed in court. 

According to the statement, as a teenager, Chouay travelled to Syria to join ISIS, “knowing that her expected role would include marrying an ISIS fighter and raising children under the ISIS doctrine.”

She is not believed to have participated directly in terrorist activities or combat.

After arriving back in Canada, Chouay underwent “depolarization therapy” and has been evaluated with a “very low” risk of recidivism. The RCMP determined she does not pose a significant risk to society. 

“At least she’s not dying in a detention camp in Syria,” said Lawrence Greenspon, an Ottawa defence lawyer who advocated for the repatriation of six Canadian women and 23 children held in Syrian detention camps, including Chouay and her daughters. 

“She’s faced justice here in Canada as it should be.” 

Greenspon looked into their plight after the Toronto relatives of an orphan held at one of the camps reached out to him over five years ago. 

He won a case forcing Global Affairs to bring the child, known as Amira, to Canada, calling it “the thin edge of the wedge” that eventually led another Federal Court judge to order the women in detention to be repatriated as well. 

Few of them faced charges due to difficulties in obtaining evidence, or a lack of evidence that they had committed terrorism-related offences — all the more reason, Greenspon said, to bring them back to Canada. 

Greenspon kept in touch with that first family for a while, chatting over the phone with the child who was learning English. 

The lawyer cited a Jewish teaching that “if you save the life of one person, it’s as if you saved the lives of so many.”

“She was the first,” he added. “It was a battle that was definitely worth fighting.”