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A French convert to Islam who became a high-ranking official in the Islamic State (ISIS) has since 2018 has been held prisoner, along with ten thousand other ISIS members and their relatives, by Kurdish forces in Syria. Now his mother claims that conditions in the Kurdish open-air prison are such that he is “in danger of death.” He now wants to be taken back by the country that he rejected and chose to fight against as an ISIS jihadist. More on Adrian Guihal, who changed his name upon his conversion to Abu Oussama al-Faransi, can be found here: “‘His Life Is in Danger’: ISIS Leader Asking for Repatriation in France,” by Hélène de Lauzun, European Conservative, February 14, 2025:
One of the high dignitaries of the Islamic State, a French national, has been held prisoner by the Kurds in northern Syria since 2018. Believing his life to be in danger, he has asked to be repatriated to France, which has created controversy: it was in fact through him that the French learned of Daesh’s involvement in two terrorist attacks on French soil.
The man was born Adrien Guihal on the French civil register, but for the Islamic State, he goes by the name Abu Oussama al-Faransi. Aged 40, he converted to radical Islam in 2002. In 2008, he took part in an attempted terrorist attack on the headquarters of the French intelligence service, foiled by the French authorities, earning him a prison sentence. Released in 2012, he then worked in a car garage reputed to be a haunt of jihadists. He travelled to Syria in 2015. Three years later, he was captured by Kurdish forces in Raqqa, then the short-lived capital of the Islamic State. He has since been imprisoned in northeastern Syria.
His mother is behind his request for repatriation. She believes that his safety is no longer assured and that he is in danger there. The request has been submitted to the French authorities several times since December 2022. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Administrative Court of Paris have already opposed it. This time, Guihal’s mother intends to appeal to the Administrative Court of Appeal of Paris. On Wednesday, February 12th, Étienne Mangeot, the terrorist’s lawyer, filed the case with the court, aiming to force France to repatriate him. Two other families have joined the appeal.
Other French nationals fighting for the Islamic State are in the same situation. According to Mangeot, 65 French nationals are being held with Guihal in Derik prison, which is in the hands of Kurdish forces, in extremely difficult conditions that “place them in real danger of death.”
But Adrien Guihal is not just another Islamist. “He is undoubtedly one of the highest-ranking living dignitaries of the Islamic State,” admits Mangeot. Since his departure for Syria in 2015, Guihal has been the subject of an international arrest warrant. There, he worked in the communications department of the Islamic State. In 2016, the day after the attack in Nice, it was his voice that the French heard in the audio recording, claiming responsibility for the terrorist attack that left 86 people dead on the 14th of July, France’s national holiday. A month earlier, he also claimed responsibility for the murder of a police couple in Magnanville, a suburb of Paris, who were savagely stabbed to death in front of their three-year-old boy….
This is the man who rejected his country — a land of Infidels — and made war on it. He joined ISIS, and took part in 2008 in an attempted attack on French intelligence headquarters. He was in a French prison from 2008 to 2012, when he was released and left France for the Islamic State. Guihal was the French voice of ISIS that claimed responsibility for the attack in which a bus was used to run down pedestrians on Bastille Day 2016 in Nice, an attack that killed 86 and wounded 303, and for the murder of a police couple in Magnanville.
He hasn’t forsworn his previous support for ISIS, and as Imam Chalghoumi says, he remains a danger to the security of the French people. He wants to be allowed to transfer from the Kurdish open-air prison to a French prison, where he would only engage in prison da’wa, helping to convert others, not just to Islam, but to the fanatical version embraced by ISIS. The request for France to take him back, after all he has done against the state and the people of France, should be summarily rejected.