On October 23, 2020, when Peter Cherif’s face appeared on the screens of the specially composed assize court, the room was packed. The successive postponements of his hearing – by videoconference from the Bois d’Arcy prison, in Yvelines – had not changed anything. It must be said that the testimony of this jihad veteran, a childhood friend of the Kouachis, is one of the most anticipated in the trial of the January 2015 attacks. The justice system suspects him of having information on the genesis of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. If he is not in the dock, it is only because he was arrested in December 2018, in Djibouti, after seven years on the run. The judges had then completed their investigations, which is why his case was separated.
But the expectations of the room are quickly doused. From the first questions, Peter Cherif retreats into a chilling silence. When the president questions him about his identity, he responds with surahs from the Koran, interrupting himself to make a proselytizing speech. Faced with the insistence of the magistrate, he finally blurts out, exasperated: “I was forced to come and testify on a case that I have nothing to do with (sic), I will not answer any questions […]I don’t have an attitude to shock, I’m not a criminal.”
Will it be the same at his own trial, which opens this Monday before the specially composed Assize Court? No, assures one of his lawyers, Mr. Sefen Guez Guez. “He wants to tell his truth, to explain his position on the affair. He has constantly denied any involvement in the attack against Charlie Hebdo.”
Peter Cherif and Chérif Kouachi, friends since adolescence
To understand the case, we must delve back into the ties that have united Peter Cherif and Chérif Kouachi, the youngest of the siblings, since adolescence. The two men are the same age, grew up in the same neighborhood – the 19th arrondissement of Paris – and have never lost touch with each other. From the beginning of the 2000s, they became radicalized within the “Buttes-Chaumont network”. In 2004, Peter Cherif left to fight the Americans in Iraq in the ranks of Al-Qaeda, while his friend was arrested just before his departure.
In February 2007, after being incarcerated in Iraqi jails, escaping and leading a clandestine life, Peter Cherif ended up surrendering to French justice. He was imprisoned for a while, but was finally placed under judicial supervision until his trial in March 2011. But two days before his conviction, he fled. To Tunisia, then very quickly to Yemen.
In the summer of 2011, his path crossed again with that of Chérif Kouachi, who was passing through Yemen with another member of the Buttes-Chaumont network. It was very likely at this time that the terrorist received the order to carry out the massacre against the satirical newspaper. “They received the same procedure as me at the beginning, they were called by executives [d’Aqpa]. I saw them again several weeks later. […]”They told me they were going to come out again, that they had a job outside,” Peter Cherif assured during his police custody, swearing that he did not know the details. And to insist: “Chérif and Sélim did not know what I was doing and I had no business knowing what they were doing.”
“We were both surprised”
At such a level of proximity, could he really be unaware of Chérif Kouachi’s “mission”? Especially since the investigation showed that the two men maintained telephone and email contacts afterwards. The four years of investigation did not demonstrate that Peter Cherif knew precisely about his friend’s mission, which is why he is being tried for terrorist criminal association and not complicity in terrorist assassinations.
“When the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place, we were both surprised, I don’t think my husband was putting on an act,” said his wife, who was arrested with him and their two children in Djibouti in December 2018. Also indicted in this case, she died of cancer in 2022. The investigating judges, however, considered that Peter Cherif facilitated his friend’s integration into the ranks of the terrorist organization AQAP.
“The translator”
On the other hand, the investigations allowed Peter Cherif to be accused of his participation in the kidnapping in 2011 of three French humanitarians taken hostage in Yemen. The latter never saw the face of the one they nicknamed the “Frenchman” or the “translator”, systematically hidden under a scarf. On the other hand, they noted some significant details, such as darker skin than the Yemenis or an ankle injury.
Although he has always refused to speak out on this point in court, his wife has acknowledged that he had taken care of hostages. Above all, the intelligence services estimated that at the time, Peter Cherif was the only Frenchman present in Yemen. He faces life imprisonment.