Two photos adorn each end of the American bar in Magali Laurent’s living room: on one, a three-and-a-half-year-old blonde child with blue eyes; on the other, a girl of the same age, brunette with brown eyes, Lila. The lovely daughters are half-sisters, from the same mother but different fathers, they have never known each other. Lila, if she is still alive, is now 9 years old.
In the vast tragedy that is the fate of the children of French jihadists who left for Syria, Lila’s story is drama within drama. Kidnapped by her father of Tunisian origin, Anis, when she was 3 years old, the child was taken without the knowledge of her mother to Turkey, in October 2015. Then her father went to Syria, where he went. joined Rakka, capital of the “caliphate” of the Islamic State (IS) organization. This is an almost unique case among departures for Syria.
Magali Laurent published a moving story in January, Come back, Lila (Grasset, 224 pages, 18 euros), where she recounts the kidnapping of her daughter and her quest to find her: “I made the choice to tell my story to give a more intimate vision of what the jihadists could do to their loved ones, how much they destroyed the lives of those around them. “ But the real subject of his book is Lila. Of her ex-boyfriend, from whom she had just divorced at the time of the kidnapping, she does not want to talk about. This man, who veiled his barely 4-year-old daughter and renamed her Fatima, is now a stranger to her. For months, he blackmailed his ex-girlfriend by promising her with each call to pass his daughter to him without doing so.
” False hopes “
Magali’s last conversation with her daughter dates back to the summer of 2016. Perhaps because the child was too agitated after these exchanges or because the father remarried on the spot, he cut off contact between Magali and Lila. . His last email goes back to March 2017; he announced that he had to flee because of the fighting. No one knows what happened to him, but the security services agree that he is dead.
As for Lila, it is the absolute mystery. The child is nowhere to be found. Research in the camps in Syria did not yield anything, but it could go unnoticed as some women jihadists hide the existence of orphans. “The investigation has remained open to the counterterrorism pole to this day, explains Frank Berton, Magali Laurent’s lawyer. On several occasions there has been outdated information, false hopes. “ It pays tribute to the anti-terrorism police and justice services that have always been “Available and mobilized”. “I know that a lot of things have been done and continue to be done”, adds Magali Laurent. She doesn’t dare say the word hope about her daughter. Lila probably doesn’t speak French anymore, if she is alive.
