Quebec woman who left Canada to join ISIS pleads guilty to terrorism offence

A Quebec woman who left Canada in 2014 to join a terrorist group was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to a terrorism offence.

Oumaima Chouay, 29, pleaded guilty to one count of participating in the activities of a terrorist group, namely the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Chouay is the first person in Canada to be convicted for providing support to a terrorist entity through family support as a spouse, according to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC).

She had been facing three additional terrorism-related charges, but those offences were stayed following her guilty plea Monday in the Court of Quebec.

After a joint submission from the Crown and defence, a judge agreed to sentence Chouay to a one-day jail sentence, which is in addition to the 110 days she has already served in pre-trial custody. She was also sentenced to three years of probation.

The PPSC says she will be required to continue participating in depolarization therapy and avoid all direct and indirect contact with people and groups associated with extremism.

“The recommended sentence here takes into consideration the early, ongoing, demonstrated and independently evaluated steps Ms. Chouay has taken to demonstrate remorse, take responsibility, commit to fundamental change and a rejection of extremist ideology. This addresses the ultimate goal of protecting the community,” the PPSC’s Director of Public Prosecution, George Dolhai, said in a written statement on Monday.

Chouay, a Canadian citizen, admitted to travelling to Syria to join ISIS, knowing that she would be expected to marry an ISIS fighter and raise children “under the ISIS doctrine.” She was not suspected of participating in any direct terrorist-related combat activities.

‘Very low’ risk of reoffending: prosecution

Since getting bail in January 2023, she has been under “strict” conditions, the prosecution service said, which included that she wear a GPS tracking bracelet, refrain from using any form of social media and report to police once a month. A family member also put up $5,000 to ensure her presence in court, and she was forbidden from speaking to several potential witnesses.

Depolarization therapy was also part of her bail conditions. Psychiatric and physiological experts in the field of terrorism assessed her progress over the past 30 months and concluded that her risk of reoffending was “very low.”

The RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) also agreed that she does not pose a significant risk to Canadian society.

Chouay was arrested by the RCMP on Oct. 25, 2022, at Montreal’s international airport after arriving from a camp for ISIS detainees in Syria with her two children. She arrived with another Canadian, Kimberly Polman of British Columbia, who was charged with terrorism offences in July 2024.

The RCMP said Chouay had been the subject of an INSET investigation since November 2014.

Court document outlines her activities as ISIS member

An agreed statement of facts details her journey to Syria and her activities prior to being repatriated to Canada in 2022.

She left Canada for Türkiye on Nov. 20, 2014 and crossed the border into Syria to join ISIS, knowing that she would be participating in terrorist activities and that the roles played by women within ISIS included recruiting members on social media, sharing propaganda, and supporting fighters.

According to the court document, less than a month after joining the group, she married Dominic Alexander Reitz, a German national and ISIS member who received a cash allowance from the group.

Chouay was given a house by ISIS in Mosul, a city in northern Iraq, when it was under the terrorist group’s control.

On Feb. 2, 2015, Chouay posted the Islamic State flag as her profile photo on her public Facebook account.

Days later, she changed it to a woman wearing a niqab bearing the image of the Islamic State and handling a gun.

During a span of several months, she was given a new house in Tal Afar, Iraq and gave birth to her first child.

By the end of January the following year, she reached out to her mother to ask for help since she was receiving less cash from ISIS.

She was moved again to Syria in 2016. In 2017, following the collapse of ISIS, which lost control of key territories, including Mosul, Chouay told her mother that she wanted to leave the Islamic State.

In November of that year, she was captured by Syrian Democratic Forces and detained with her child at the Roj camp for foreign nationals in a region recaptured from the Islamic State.

She gave birth to her second child months later.

By accepting the plea deal, she “admits that her actions … increased the Islamic State’s ability to engage in or facilitate terrorist activities,” according to the agreed statement of facts.

With files from The Canadian Press.