AT LARGE
- Full name: Mylène Foucre
- Pseudonym: “Fatima”
- Alternatives: N/a
- Location: Syria, fmr France, fmr Egypt
- Affiliation: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh], Artigat and Toulouse Network [FAT]
Mylène Foucre is a French woman from the Norman town of Alençon who coverted to Islam under the influence of her boyfriend and future husband Fabien Clain in 1998.1 Like Clain, she became very fanatical in her faith and began to cover herself completely in public.2 The couple moved to Toulouse where her husband began to proselytize among local Muslims, gained a few dozen followers and developed deep ties to Islamist commune leader Olivier Corel.3
In early 2003, Foucre followed her husband to Brussels where the couple mingled with North African Islamists.4 They returned to France in late 2004 and went to live with Corel. In the mid-2000s, she followed Clain to Egypt as he went to study at Salafi seminaries in the suburbs of Cairo.5 The Artigat and Toulouse Network [FAT; Filière d’Artigat et Toulouse] to which Foucre and Clain belonged became increasingly focused on jihad during this time. Clain helped to inspire and facilitate the effort by several of the network’s associates to join Iraqi al-Qa’ida forces. French authorities clamped down on the FAT after two of its members were intercepted in Syria as they tried to reach Iraq in December 2006. On Feb. 20, 2008, Foucre and her husband were arrested in Toulouse after the couple had returned to France.6 She was released shortly afterwards. Clain was later sentenced to five years in prison. Upon his release in August 2012, the family returned to Alençon.7
Foucre and her husband became supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh; Dawlat al-Islamiya fi-Iraq wal ash-Sham] in the mid-2010s. In 2015, the couple and their children traveled to Syria and settled in the city of Raqqa.8 Her husband became a leading propagandist for the DaIISh. The couple remained devoted to the organization even as its fortuned turned in the late 2010s. By early 2019, they were holed up in the DaIISh’s last Syrian stronghold, Baghouz. Her husband was killed in an American air strike on Feb. 20.9 Foucre was later caught by Kurdish forces and put in a prisoner camp. At one point, she made a thwarted bid to flee from the facility.10 In the camp, Foucre was known to exert significant influence over other women and discourage them from returning to Europe. She refuses to renounce the DaIISh and does not want to be repatriated to France.11
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