It is a ghost that is about to judge, once again, the specially constituted court of assizes. An evil spirit whose shadow hangs over many files of Islamist attacks committed in France. Rashid Kassim was reportedly killed by a drone strike in the Mosul region of Iraq in May 2017. US authorities confirmed his death two days later. But in the absence of formal proof of his death, French justice has maintained its proceedings against the French jihadist, his companion Justine Taquard and Mohammed Ghellab, who are no longer alive too. All three from Roanne, in the Loire, they will be tried on Friday by default, in Paris, for criminal terrorist association. Kassim is also appearing for having been filmed beheading a man and for having uttered death threats.
The three accused went to the Iraqi-Syrian zone in May 2015, in order to swell the ranks of Daesh. Born in January 1987, Kassim distinguished himself in combat by committing the worst atrocities. Broadcast on July 21, 2016 on a Telegram channel, a video titled “Their coalition and our terrorism” shows two men each beheading a hostage. Alongside another jihadist, Amin Shewil, Rachid Kassim, in military uniform and face uncovered, welcomes the attack committed a few days earlier on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Then he threatens France by brandishing the bloody head of his victim. “Decapitating an animal would be difficult. Beheading an enemy of Allah is a pleasure,” he told a jihadist site.
Tutorial for apprentice terrorist
After a knee injury during training, he quickly established himself as a seasoned French recruiter. Omnipresent on social networks – his Facebook page has up to 12,000 subscribers – he multiplied, during the summer of 2016, calls to commit attacks in France, in particular through his Telegram channel “Sabre de lumière “. It develops and distributes to its subscribers a guide for apprentice terrorists entitled “the guide to the solitary lion”. A kind of tutorial containing “tricks” and advice for a successful attack, recommending operating methods and designating targets that he considers to be priorities. Among the latter, the journalist David Thomson and the director of the Terrorism Analysis Center (CAT), Jean-Charles Brisard, whom he describes as “anti-Islam experts” and whom he threatens with death.
The influence of the propagandist of Daesh with his community of radicalized people has grown to the point of making him an “instigator of attacks in France”, estimates justice. Rachid Kassim is known for having remotely controlled the assassination of a couple of police officers in Magnanville (Yvelines) in June 2016, the failed attack on gas canisters near Notre-Dame cathedral three months later in Paris, or for his complicity in the assassination of Father Hamel in his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime) at the end of July 2016. He has already been sentenced twice by default to life imprisonment.
Claim Videos
On Telegram, Kassim encouraged women to become actively involved in jihad, not by going to Syria but by preparing attacks on the territory. He developed a whole religious argument to convince them that they have the right – and even the duty – to commit violent actions on French soil. He also incited several minors to carry out an attack after sending them a protest video. He finally broadcast on his channel videos of claims of attacks, in particular that of Larossi Aballa, the assassin of Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jessica Schneider in Magnanville, and that of Adel Kermiche and Abdelmalik Petitjean, the murderers of Father Jacques Hamel in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.