He was arrested in Turkey in 2014. Former jihadist recruiter Mourad Farès, 35, was sentenced Friday evening in Paris to 22 years in prison for having incited dozens of young people to go to jihad in Syria and for to have led a group of French-speaking combatants there.
The special assize court attached this conviction, in accordance with the requisitions of the Advocate General, to a two-thirds security period. Mourad Farès, who had fled Syria in the summer of 2014, a year after his arrival, remained unmoved in the box when the verdict was announced. The prosecution representative had called for punishment for her "determining" role in the recruitment of many young people, even very young, and castigated the accused for the absence of "real repentance".
Regrets "
Friday, "for the first time" since his incarceration in France in September 2014, Mourad Farès had expressed his "regrets", but he has "a more important responsibility than that which he accepted to endorse", had estimated the magistrate .
At the hearing, the accused defended himself from being a leading recruiter, admitting that he had been able "indirectly" to incite departures via his propaganda videos and to have "facilitated" numerous passages in Syria, joined in July 2013 after a journey by car through Europe.
If he admitted having provided the contact of a smuggler to a group of ten Strasbourg residents who entered Syria in mid-December 2013 - which included Foued Mohamed-Aggad, one of the future suicide bombers of Bataclan -, he denied having had any influence on their departure. This was also assured by ex-members of the group heard as witnesses, after having overwhelmed Mourad Farès on their return to France.
Strasbourg sector
"Call it recruit, encourage, help: it is a determining factor in the departure of Strasbourg and a catalyst for many others", a "forty people" in total, had supported the representative of the prosecution. For the latter, Mourad Farès had radicalized “before” his meeting at the end of 2012 with his “mentor” Oumar Diaby, a major recruiter also known as Omar Omsen of whom he said he was “one of the victims” .
Because the accused "developed an elaborate propaganda from the end of 2012", "realizing" in particular a video calling for jihad and viewed by "200 to 300,000" people. he social networks "give it exceptional visibility", but Mourad Farès "goes beyond virtual exchanges to organize meetings", with jihad candidates from all over France met on the Internet, added the representative of the prosecution.
Mourad Farès' lawyer, Paul Fortin, had questioned him "the real influence" of this propaganda on young people who said during the debates "that they would have left without him". "I don't have the feeling that he was brainwashing," he insisted.
Mourad Farès, who refutes having fought in Syria, for the lawyer general "participated in armed actions" within the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, which became Islamic State in 2014), before leaving the terrorist organization to integrate the brigade of Oumar Diaby, affiliated to the Al-Nusra Front (former Syrian branch of Al Qaida).
" Move on "
The Assize Court also found Mourad Farès guilty of having “led” this brigade of young French-speaking combatants in early 2014, in the absence of Oumar Diaby, who then left for Senegal.
Challenging this role of "leadership", Mourad Farès - also convicted of financing terrorism - had mentioned "active participation in a certain logistics, mainly for accommodation". But "to lead is to lead, lead, manage, regulate", retorted the Advocate General.
On the return of Oumar Diaby in Syria in February-March 2014, Mourad Farès had left the group following a "dispute" which, he assured, was not "a power struggle", then Syria four months later. Arrested in Turkey, he was handed over to France in September 2014 and collaborated with the authorities.
In his last words before the court withdrew to deliberate, Mourad Farès said he had "moved on to something else for quite some time". "He is no longer dangerous," also pleaded Mr. Fortin.
The Assize Court also sentenced Ali Eddine Benali, 25, who appeared free under judicial supervision for having attempted to reach Syria with Mourad Farès, to five years' imprisonment, entirely suspended, with release test for three years.
Two other participants in the trip, Bilel Ben Mimoun and Hachmi Hattabi, presumed dead in Syria and who were tried in absentia, were sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment, two thirds of which were security.
Justice
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