For nine months, all appear before the special assize court of Paris. Sitting in the same glass box alongside the only survivor of the commandos of the November 13 attacks – Salah Abdeslam – their names remain unknown to the general public. The 30-year-old who grew up in Molenbeek “focused all attention, expectations, anger”, conceded the general counsel, Camille Hennetier.
Scooping out the heaviest requisitions, incompressible life imprisonment, the man is however not the only one to have suffered the wrath of the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat). Qualified by the prosecution as “seasoned fighters” or “kingpin” of the jihadist cell, Mohamed Abrini, Osama Krayem, Sofien Ayari and Mohamed Bakkali were all targeted for life imprisonment during the choral indictment of the Pnat.
Mohamed Abrini, the voluble accused
Along with his neighbor and neighborhood friend Salah Abdeslam, Mohamed Abrini is perhaps the best identified accused of this hearing. Long nicknamed the “man in the hat” after fleeing during the attacks in Brussels in March 2016, Mohamed Abrini admitted to the hearing that he was “planned” for the attacks of November 13. Present in Paris the day before the attacks alongside other members of the commandos, the Molenbeekois assured that he had given up his jihadist destiny well before that date and that he had been content to accompany the rest of the “convoy of the death” to say goodbye to his friends. An inveterate gambler, addict to casinos and notorious delinquent, the accused explained that he was deeply marked by the death of his little brother who had left to join Daesh in Syria. Informed of his death while serving a prison sentence, Abrini said he was “collapsed” and driven by a single desire: “to go to Syria”. This is what he will do as soon as he is released from detention, before returning to Europe in the summer of 2015.
In September 2015, he explained, “I am told: you are going to be part of a project. But I don’t know that it’s the Bataclan, that it’s France. I just know that there is a project. “. Not hesitating to justify the attacks as a “response to the bombardments” of the international coalition in Iraq and Syria, Mohamed Abrini took no “distance with the Islamic state”, estimated the general counsel, Camille Hennetier . The prosecution requested against him life imprisonment with a security sentence of 22 years.
Osama Krayem, “seasoned fighter” or “quidam” of Daesh?
At 29, the Swede Osama Krayem was one of the “phantom” defendants in the box. Repeatedly refusing to attend the hearing, he exercised his right to silence barely three months after the start of the trial. “No one is here to try to understand what happened and get answers (…) we are all pretending. This trial is an illusion,” he explained in a letter read to the court by his lawyer. Mute, Osama Krayem said almost nothing about his career from Malmö to Raqqa. At the helm, only a former volunteer French teacher who accompanied him for four years during his detention mentioned “the parcel of humanity” perceived in the accused.
Having left for Syria to join the ranks of Daesh in 2014, Osama Krayem is accused of having planned an attack at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport (Netherlands), the day of the attacks of November 13, 2015. Integrated into the clandestine cell before and after the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, this young Swede would also have given up at the last minute on setting off his bomb in the Brussels metro on morning of March 22, 2016. For the anti-terrorist prosecution, this “seasoned fighter” was far from being a “quidam” within the terrorist organization. Witness his presence in an unbearable Daesh propaganda video in which a Jordanian pilot is burned alive in a cage. Prosecuted for complicity in murders in an organized gang, Osama Krayem was the subject of heavy requisitions: life imprisonment with 30 years of security.
Sofien Ayari, silence or hope
Tunisian born on August 9, 1993, Sofien Ayari, 28, was Salah Abdeslam’s companion in Belgium. After joining Daesh in Syria at the end of 2014, he returned to Europe in 2015 along with Osama Krayem. His DNA was found in several hideouts used in the preparation of the attacks of November 13 and the investigators suspect him of having wanted to commit or prepare, with Osama Krayen, an attack at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport in parallel with the attacks Parisians.
In the wake of his Swedish sidekick, Sofien Ayari quickly asserted his right to silence. Arrested in Brussels at the same time as Abdeslam in March 2016, he has already been sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment in Belgium for shooting at a police officer. “I’m going to defend myself like a dog for two years to finally take 80 years? For guys like me, having hope is dangerous, ”he said to the court before wallowing in silence. The public prosecutor, considering that he was “fully part of the November 13 device”, demanded life imprisonment and a 30-year security sentence against him.
Mohammad Bakkali, the friend ” useful » Where the “kingpin”
This is the second time in less than two years that this 35-year-old Belgian-Moroccan has faced French justice. In December 2020, Mohamed Bakkali was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison at the trial of the Thalys attack. Prosecuted for driving Abdelhamid Abaaoud and the author of the attack, Ayoub El-Khazzani to Brussels in the summer of 2015, he appealed this decision. Questioned in January on the facts of which he is accused in the file of 13-November, this defendant also decided to oppose his silence to the many questions of the court of assizes. “I no longer have the strength to fight and explain myself (…) whatever I say, whatever I do, my word is always suspect,” he regretted.
His close ties with the El-Bakraoui brothers, two suicide bombers in the Brussels attacks, the rental under a false identity of hideouts made available to the cell and the jihadist documents found in his computer were however of particular interest to the magistrates. Nicknamed “the Bearded”, this expert in counterfeits was, according to the prosecution “a central piece” of the jihadist cell, “its linchpin”. Emphasizing on several occasions “the intelligence” of this defendant who graduated with a degree in sociology, Camille Hennetier warned: “He wanted to appear as the useful idiot. Useful no doubt, silly certainly not”. Life imprisonment with twenty-two years of safety was required against him.