Sentenced to twenty-four and twenty-eight years of criminal imprisonment, Clément Baur and Mahiedine Merabet, accused of having planned an attack in Marseille during the 2017 presidential campaign, appealed their conviction, we learned on Thursday from judicial sources. The public prosecutor’s office also appealed against the two men convicted on December 3 by the Paris Special Assize Court for criminal terrorist association.
Clément Baur and Mahiedine Merabet each faced 30 years of criminal imprisonment. Their sentences were accompanied by a two-thirds security period. There was no appeal concerning the other convicts and only Clément Baur and Mahiedine Merabet will be retried on appeal.
Marseille escaped “a mass killing”, according to the prosecution
Spotted by a cyberinfiltrated agent from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), Clément Baur, 30, and Mahiedine Merabet, 36, were arrested in Marseille five days before the first round of the 2017 presidential election. In their hideout , the police had discovered more than 3.5 kg of TATP, a homemade explosive popular with jihadists, manufactured by Mahiedine Merabet, a loaded Uzi machine gun, three pistols, hundreds of ammunition as well as bolts, a wig, a vest tactical, a hunting knife, a GoPro camera.
The “act” of Clément Baur and Mahiedine Merabet was “imminent”, the representatives of the prosecution assured the audience during their joint requisitions. The “searches for potential targets” carried out in the days preceding their arrest constitute proof, according to them, that the two men were ready to commit “carnage”.
Among the searches carried out on the Internet by the two men, who knew each other in prison, there were notably: “gay sauna”, “libertine club”, “FN bar”, “Le Pen Marseille meeting”, “American bar”, “kosher restaurant”… “So many targets which met the objectives of the Islamic State”, underlined one of the general lawyers. “It was a close call for the city of Marseille to experience a mass killing,” they said.