He was sentenced in absentia to twenty years in prison in 2001. The last member on the run of the “Roubaix gang”, Seddik Benbahlouli, was handed over to the French authorities on Friday and imprisoned, announced the Douai general prosecutor’s office, in a statement. The 53-year-old man was recently arrested in the United States. He “will be judged by the Assize Court of the North for the facts having justified his conviction in absentia, (…) unless he expresses his acquiescence to this conviction within one month”, it is specified in the communicated.
On the run for more than twenty-five years, Seddik Benbahlouli was convicted in 2001 for acts committed in 1995 and 1996, in particular “attempted murders of persons holding public authority” and “criminal association with a view to preparing crimes of armed robbery.
Robberies to finance the Islamist cause
He was arrested in the United States for violating the legislation on foreigners, while he was traveling under a false identity, according to a police source. “Administratively expelled from the United States and handed over to the French authorities because of his nationality”, he landed at Roissy airport on Friday, according to the general prosecutor’s office.
The “Roubaix gang” was initially formed around a core group attending the Daawa mosque in Roubaix in the 1990s. Nine of the ten members had gone to Bosnia, alongside Arab and Afghan Islamists who had come fight with the Bosnian army. The idea of setting up a group in France and organizing robberies to finance the Islamist cause was born in 1995.
Failed attack
Armed attack on a Brink’s van, robbery of a supermarket: at the beginning of 1996, the group carried out several attacks with weapons of war in the Lille metropolis, a shooting leaving one dead in Roubaix. On March 28, a car bomb attack parked in front of the old police station was narrowly avoided, a few days before a G7 meeting in Lille.
The day after this failed attack, on March 29, 1996, the Raid attacked a group hideout in Roubaix. Of the ten members of the “gang”, four were killed during the assault, one was killed the next day and three were arrested and then sentenced to heavy prison terms in 2001. One of them, Lionel Dumont, arrested in 2003 in Germany after being on the run for almost eight years, was sentenced in 2007 to 25 years of criminal imprisonment. He has been placed under an electronic bracelet since the end of 2022. Only Seddik Benbahlouli had never been found until then.