World’s most wanted female ISIS terrorist found alive and living freely in Syria

9 January 2025, 13:20 | Updated: 9 January 2025, 14:02

The world's most wanted female ISIS terrorist, Hayat Boumeddienne (pictured), is living in Syria
The world's most wanted female ISIS terrorist, Hayat Boumeddienne (pictured), is living in Syria. Picture: social media

By StephenRigley

THE world's most wanted ISIS woman terrorist is alive and living freely in Syria, 10 years after taking part in a notorious attack in Paris.

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Hayat Boumeddienne, 36, and her lover Amedy Coulibaly, then 32, were also part of the Charlie Hebdo cell which murdered 12 people in January 2015.

French security services released news on the widow's current life on the anniversary of the 2015 Paris attack while reminding people that she remains ""The Most Wanted woman in France".

A spokesman for the Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office revealed that "she is still alive and in Syria" according to their information.

Boumeddiene’s survival is seen as remarkable, given that most jihadi brides involved in active operations have been killed or captured.

Hayat Boumeddiene (L) and  Amedy Coulibaly (R)
Hayat Boumeddiene (L) and Amedy Coulibaly (R). Picture: Getty

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Witnesses say French intelligence officers how Boumeddiene uses disguises and false names to evade justice.

ISIS are said to even provide the terrorist "with an apartment with all the necessary household appliances," one source told Le Parisien.

The source said: "It was a specific apartment, divided into two, a man’s side and a woman’s side."She had her own room. She didn’t need to be protected."

Boumeddiene even appeared in an online ISIS propaganda magazine boasting of "joining the Caliphate without difficulty," eerily adding, "May France be cursed by Allah".

Boumeddiene and her husband Amedy Coulibaly were part of the Charlie Hebdo cell, which murdered 12 people around the satirical magazine's offices in Paris in January 2015.

The terrorists said they were on a revenge mission after the satirical weekly published cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed.

French police storm the grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris where ISIS terrorist Amedy Coulibaly killed five people
French police storm the grocery store in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris where ISIS terrorist Amedy Coulibaly killed five people. Picture: Getty

It was on January 9, 2015, that Hayat Boumeddienne's husband, Amedy Coulibaly - then 32 - lay siege to a kosher supermarket in the east of the French capital.

After five hours he murdered customers Philippe Braham, 45, Yohan Cohen, 22, Yoav Hattab, 21, and François-Michel Saada, 64. Earlier, he had also killed Clarissa Jean-Philippe, a 27-year-old police woman.

Couilbaly was killed at the scene.

In 2020, Boumeddiene was given a 30-year-sentence in her absence for helping Coulibaly with the slaughter.She was convicted in absentia at a special court in Paris of a variety of charges, including 'membership of a terrorist enterprise' and 'financing terrorism'.

Boumeddienne is also said to have helped Said and Cherif Kouachi, the two brothers who carried out the murders around the offices of the magazine.

Her DNA was found on guns being stored by Coulibaly, while prosecutors say she also made more than 500 phone calls to the home of Cherif Kouachi in the run-up to the attacks.

Both ISIS and Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the 2015 attacks, which were the beginning of a wave of terrorism across France.

Boumeddiene is a French national who was born into an Algerian immigrant family in the Paris suburb of Villiers-sur-Marne.

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