Failing to have fought in France, Amar Felouki will spend fifteen years in prison there. Tried since Monday for terrorist criminal association, the young man from Villeneuve-d’Ascq, in the north of France, had joined Syria via Turkey in September 2013 with a cousin and two friends from his neighborhood, to join the terrorist organization al-Nusra. He is the only one to have returned alive to France.
The charges, which he partially acknowledges, are “extremely serious”, considered the court, stressing that he had “stayed in the area for four years” and had participated “at the very least” for more than two years. a year of “fighting within a terrorist group” affiliated with al-Qaeda. This “testifies to a persistent adherence to the ideology” jihadist, judged the president, David Hill. “It doesn’t look like you’ve done any real soul-searching,” he added.
“Doubts” concerning “the persistence of the ideological anchoring” of the accused
Amar Felouki had said nothing to his parents, nor to his pregnant wife, financing the departure with a bank overdraft. At the hearing, he admitted that the propaganda on the Internet had stimulated his desire to go “fight Bashar” al-Assad and “apply sharia”. He claims to have left the fight after a serious injury at the end of 2014, to join a Koranic school located in Darkouch, near Turkey, where he would have stayed for nearly three years.
Intercepted by the Turkish authorities in the fall of 2017, after crossing the border, Amar Felouki was detained for several months in Turkey, before being expelled to France in May 2018. On Wednesday morning, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat ) had requested eighteen years in prison accompanied by a security sentence of twelve years, evoking his “doubts” concerning “the persistence of the ideological anchoring” of Amar Felouki, now 31 years old.
Refusal to participate in psychological interviews
“Not, at a single moment, Amar Felouki spontaneously questioned his commitment”, underlined the Advocate General. She was also not convinced by the accused’s account, judging it “very unlikely” that the al-Nusra Front did without “a man capable of fighting for three years”, while the fighting were raging.
“Four years in a terrorist organization is extremely long,” said the Advocate General, seeing it as a sign of “acceptance of its rules” and “total mastery of combat techniques”. The Pnat representative also regretted the accused’s refusal to participate in interviews with a psychologist during his assessment in detention. “We need to know who Mr. Felouki is” before trusting him, she explained.
His lawyer plans to appeal
“The quantum of the sentence does not surprise me,” commented the lawyer for the accused after the statement of the verdict. Florian Lastelle said on the other hand “a little disappointed by the security sentence” pronounced, of ten years, which “prevents him from asking for an adjustment of sentence” in the immediate future. During his argument, at the end of the morning, he asked the court to pronounce a decision which “gives perspective” and “hope” to Amar Felouki. “There is no proven dangerousness in Mr. Felouki”, he assured, highlighting his “voluntary” return to France.
Me Lastelle also regretted “decisions motivated by reports which are imprecise, written by people whom we do not know, whose professional qualities we do not know”, in reference to the evaluation report written in detention. He also described as “historical untruth” the presentation of the accusation putting “on an equal footing membership in Jabhat al-Nosra”, the group integrated by Amar Felouki, and the Islamic State organization. The lawyer said he was “thinking” about a possible appeal of the verdict.