Swiss trial opens of parents accused of supporting Islamic State

The trial of two parents accused of financially supporting their son who left Switzerland to fight for Islamic State (IS) in Syria in 2015 opened at the Federal Criminal Court on Monday.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The court has decided to move forward with the trial of the parents, who are accused of supporting IS, and to begin questioning the mother. The father, absent for health reasons, will be summoned for a later hearing. This will take place in at least ten days, as required by the legal procedure.

The 60-year-old woman used to work in the hotel industry, but following an accident she now receives a full disability pension. Her relations with her three sons, including the one who left for Syria, are said to be “excellent”.

In 2015, her son reportedly explained that he wanted to go on vacation and that he was “invited”. His mother claims she noticed no change in his behaviour, apart from the fact that he no longer ate pork and went to the mosque. She claimed not to have known anything about the Islamic State or Syria until then.

+ Swiss attorney general charges two people with terror financing

The mother and son initially phoned each other on a daily basis, then less often. He told her that he wanted to come home, that he had got married and that the couple had had a little girl.

On Monday the court president produced transcripts of communications in which the son spoke of blowing himself up in Switzerland, as well as photos in which he posed armed as an IS fighter. The accused claimed he was forced to do this. “I don’t know. He’s my son. Maybe he was threatened.”

+ How the heightened IS terror threat affects Switzerland

Asked about payments totalling over CHF50,000 between 2016 and 2019, the mother insisted that she had wanted to support her son, not Syria or the war. “I wanted him to be able to leave with his wife and the baby,” she said.

This was why the final payments, CHF40,000, were allegedly made while the son and his family were held captive by Kurds.

“I’m a mother. My son with a gun, it’s not him,” said the accused. “He could do no wrong, he was gentle. It’s a false image. I can’t accept people saying he’s a terrorist.”

According to the mother, her son went to Syria against his will. “They must have threatened him to hurt me.” She concluded that without her money, her son would have been killed. And added that he had not consciously done any harm. “He was deceived,” she said.

The case in Bellinzona, canton Ticino, continues.

Translated from German by DeepL/sb

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].