Yolanda Martínez Cobos

Yolanda Martínez Cobos also called Yolanda Martínez (born 1985) is a Spanish female terrorist who, in 2014, traveled to Syria and joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant with her husband and children. She was repatriated to Spain in 2023, and in 2025 she was sentenced to three years in prison for integration into a terrorist organization.

Background and life in ISIL Martínez Cobos was born in Salamanca, Madrid in 1985. She attended a prestigious Marianist school as a child, and studied fine arts in high school with the intention of becoming a painter. She did not have any education after high school but worked as a shop assistant in the department store El Corte Inglés. At 22, she married Omar El Harshi (sometimes spelled “El Harchi” or given as “Omar el Harchi el Fertakh”) , a plasterer of Moroccan origin who had introduced her to Islam. El Harshi later became a Spanish citizen.

In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais in 2019, Martínez Cobos said sometimes she and El Harshi had to live in with her parents for financial reasons. They arrived in Syria with their four-year-old son, and Martínez Cobos would go on to have two daughters and another son.

Criminal charges The Audiencia Nacional ruled in December 2014, after El Harshi was already in Syria with his wife and children, that he had been "operational leader" of the Al-Andalus Brigade, a jihadist network at the Madrid Central Mosque, recruiting people to come to Syria and Iraq to carry out attacks.

On March 1, 2019, when ISIL was defeated at their territorial last stand in Baghuz, El Harshi surrendered with his family. Martínez Cobos said her husband had grown disillusioned by the "sins and bad behavior" of ISIL members whom he felt had betrayed the organization. The couple was separated, El Harshi was jailed and Martínez Cobos and her four children were taken the Al-Hawl refugee camp. She told El Pais she felt she had done nothing wrong, stating, "The Spanish justice system can’t send me to prison for taking care of my home and my children." The women were detained on arrival on charges of joining a terror organization. Martínez Cobos filed for divorce from El Harshi in Spain.

Martínez Cobos spent nearly two years in jail in Spain awaiting trial, before reaching a plea agreement with the prosecution in April 2025, pleading guilty to integration into a terrorist organization. Her husband had played a larger role in ISIL than she had said. She was sentenced to three years in prison and required to complete a terrorist deradicalization program. In December 2025, she was ordered to serve the remainder of her sentence under a "third penitentiary regime", which allows her to leave prison during the day from Monday to Thursday and return only to spend the night.