Mother Of Slain French Soldier Fights Against Radicalization

By Eleanor Beardsley

Published December 23, 2015 at 5:43 PM EST

Latifa Ibn Ziaten, shown here speaking to French elementary schoolchildren in March, started an organization to prevent radicalization after her son, a French soldier, was killed by an Islamist gunman in March 2012.

The terrorist attacks in Paris this year — in January and November — were both carried out by French citizens who became Islamist radicals. The phenomenon of home-grown terrorism first came to light here three years ago, when a French citizen of Algerian descent killed a teacher and three children at a Jewish school and three French soldiers in a rampage in southwestern France.

The Moroccan-born mother of one of those soldiers, who was Muslim, has led a personal battle ever since.

Students pour into the auditorium of a high school in the gritty northern suburbs of Paris. It's in places like this that Latifa Ibn Ziaten has waged her campaign over the past three years. Most of the kids here are from immigrant backgrounds. The majority are Muslim.

Teachers bark orders as the rowdy teenagers file in and take their seats. But you can hear a pin drop as soon as Ziaten begins telling her story.

The soft-spoken mother of five says her life changed forever on March 11, 2012, when a man named Mohamed Mehra shot and killed her 30-year-old son, Imad, a French soldier.

Latifa Ibn Ziaten prayed during an October 2012 tribute ceremony at her family home honoring the memory of her son, Imad, shown in a framed picture.

Soon after his murder, Ziaten visited the housing project where Mehra had lived in Toulouse. Following his killing spree, he'd also died here in a shootout with police.

She approached a group of young men.

"Ever since I heard them tell me, 'Madame, Mohamed Mehra is a martyr, he's a hero of Islam,' I haven't been able to stop doing what I'm doing," she says. "I thought, God, no. We have to help these lost young people. So I promised my son, I said, 'Imad, I'm going to start an association and I'm going to save others so they won't suffer like me.' "

Ziaten says the boys in the housing project were stunned and apologized when they found out Mehra had killed her son. He shouldn't have killed a Muslim, they said.

Ziaten retorted that Muslim or not, no one but God has the right to take a life.

Amand Riquier, the principal of the high school Ziaten is visiting in the northern suburbs of Paris, says so far, no students have radicalized. But teachers are always looking for the signs, such as a sudden and zealous display of religiousness.

Secularism is one of France's most important values, up there with equality, fraternity and liberty. In French schools, neither students nor teachers can come to class wearing religious symbols such as the Muslim veil or the Jewish skullcap.

Riquier says Madame Ziaten's visit is important.

"She'll be able to explain to them that secularism in schools is not meant to constrain their faith, but is a necessary principle for us all to live together in harmony and equality," he says.

Ziaten tells the students how she moved to France from Morocco at the age of 17. She tells the kids this country gave her — and her French-born children — every opportunity.

She says boys like Mohamed Mehra, and those who attacked Paris this year, were abandoned by their families and society. She says they are utter failures who know nothing about Islam.

Islam is not at war with Europe, Ziaten emphasizes. She tells the students that some are trying to turn Islam into an identity. But it's a religion, she says, and it's a private matter.

"Your identity is French," she says. "And you have a future to build in France."

Ziaten is well received. The students applaud, then pepper her with questions.

One student asks how young people can know the right way to practice Islam. Ziaten tells her they must learn from their parents and never turn to the Internet.

The student, 19-year-old Souhir Khayat, says she became interested in learning about her faith after attending Catholic school.

"So I began watching videos on the Internet, like everybody," Khayat says. "Alone in my room. And I started to wear the veil and stopped listening to music. I began having some radical ideas. But luckily, my mother noticed what was going on and she said, 'No, Islam is not like that.' "

A boy asks Ziaten, "Why do the media always point at Muslims after attacks?"

Ziaten agrees the media tend to stigmatize Muslims. But people are scared, she says, and that's understandable.

"We have to show who real Muslims are," she says.

For her work, Ziaten has received a presidential award — and threats. When she leaves the lycee for her next appointment, she's accompanied by an armed bodyguard.