Former French jihadist Othman Garrido has been sentenced to 30 years in prison by a Special Assize Court in Paris for his participation in a 2015 double execution in Syria.
The 32-year-old native of Montpellier, a major city in southern France, was found guilty on Tuesday of murders committed as part of an organized gang and criminal terrorist association. The court ordered that he must serve a minimum of two-thirds of his sentence before becoming eligible for release under French security period rules.
Public prosecutors had requested life imprisonment with a 22-year minimum safety term. However, the tribunal acquitted Garrido on a separate murder charge involving another victim.
That charge relied on a low-quality, undated photograph showing a partially masked man standing near a decapitated head without geographic coordinates. Forensic experts were unable to formally identify Garrido in the image. Defence attorney Antoine Ory said the court had taken into account his client's record in custody and logically acquitted him of the murder charge.
Execution evidence in Syria
The court upheld charges relating to the September 2015 public execution of two Iranian nationals in the Syrian town of al-Qaryatayn. Investigators recovered photographs from a mobile phone belonging to Garrido's wife showing him inside a pick-up truck transporting the condemned men.
Subsequent images showed Garrido alongside French jihadists Oumar Diaw and Yacine Rettoun, who are both now dead, posing before the decapitated bodies. Al-Qaryatayn, located in the central Syrian province of Homs, was seized by Daesh in 2015 during the Syrian civil war as the militant group captured large swathes of territory across Syria and Iraq to proclaim a self-styled caliphate.
In France, terror-related cases are tried before the Special Assize Court in Paris, where a panel of professional magistrates presides instead of a civilian jury to evaluate national security crimes. Hundreds of French nationals travelled to the Middle East to join militant factions during the conflict, leading French judicial authorities to prosecute returning or captured fighters.
Radical family background
The trial, which opened on 14 September, detailed Garrido's path to radicalisation after he left France for Syria in 2012 at the age of 18. During court proceedings, Garrido described himself as having been born radicalised within an intensely religious family led by a converted father.
Prosecutors described the family unit as closed off from society, isolated under a glass bell, and radicalised. The prosecutor characterised it as an Islamist combat family where children were forbidden from drawing human faces and where a television set was purchased specifically to be pelted with stones.
The court heard that Garrido and his older brother Oubey gradually gained independence before traveling to Syria, where the remainder of their family later joined them. Prosecutors argued that while breaking away from such indoctrination was not easy, the brothers had the choice to do so.
Debate over prison rehabilitation
Defence lawyers emphasised expert testimony regarding sectarian mechanisms within the family environment, arguing the young man had few practical opportunities to extract himself from his upbringing.
Garrido's evolution during detention formed a central topic of debate throughout the trial. He detailed pursuing academic studies, receiving psychological support, and distancing himself from jihadist ideology, an evolution acknowledged by experts but treated with caution by prosecutors.
Louise el-Yafi, representing the French Association of Victims of Terrorism, questioned how the legal system should address such complex cases. She described Garrido as neither a convinced jihadist nor a fully reformed penitent, adding that it remained impossible to know whether he was being sincere or concealing his true beliefs.
