On the one hand, a hypermnesic investigator who remembers everything, every license plate, every phone number. On the other, a woman who had to forget everything, even her own identity. “SDAT 99” was working in the Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate during the manhunt that allowed to “neutralize” Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the operational leader of the attacks of November 13, 2015. “Sonia” is the citizen who “gave” the terrorist and paid the price. She has since changed marital status, city, life, to join the witness protection program, invented especially for her in 2016.
Through the account of these two witnesses, the special assize court of Paris traced, Friday, April 8, the five days of feverish tracking which avoided a new attack after November 13. “SDAT 99” is the first to file, face to face. He sets the scene: on November 14, 2015, the investigators manage to locate the commando car which “39 dead in twelve minutes” the day before on Parisian terraces: it was abandoned overnight in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), at the gates of Paris. In the passenger compartment, they discover three Kalashnikovs, 81 unused cartridges and three butcher’s knives. One of its occupants has already blown himself up at the “Comptoir Voltaire” café, but the other two have disappeared.
RATP images reveal that the two men, Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh, who were not identified at the time, took the metro after leaving their vehicle. One of them is wearing orange sneakers. They got off at Nation station at 10:26 p.m., during the Bataclan massacre, before disappearing into the night. Why did the two terrorists abandon their weapons and vehicle on the evening of the attacks? This is one of the great mysteries of this case.
Tprovidential testimony
“Something did not go as planned, the duo was interrupted in the middle of a murderous journeySDAT99 analysis. When we look at the return journey after the suicide attack at Comptoir Voltaire, the vehicle does anything: it circles the Place de la Nation three times and takes forbidden directions before arriving at Porte de Bagnolet. Then the duo abandons their weapons in Montreuil, which is perfectly incongruous for candidates for martyrdom..
According to the investigator, an attack was planned at Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport, where a terrorist had made a “tracking” a few hours earlier. He therefore puts forward two hypotheses: either a last-minute unforeseen event derailed the project, or the two men got lost at the gates of Paris while on their way to the airport: “The Porte de Bagnolet is a monstrous interchange, it’s easy to get lost. We can imagine that the duo got lost and landed in Montreuil. »
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