• Tweeter

  • republish

Five women appear before the Assize Court of Paris. Among them, Inès Madani (left). Benoit PEYRUCQ / AFP

After a first brief interrogation of Inès Madani, 19 years old at the time and described as the main instigator of the attempted bombing near Notre-Dame de Paris in September 2016, her family was heard on Wednesday 25 September to try to enlighten his passage to the act.

" I blame her for what she did and because she broke a family. But it was a child, it is always one, "pleads the brother-in-law of Ines Madani. On the night of September 3 to 4, 2016, with her co-accused Ornella Gilligmann, this 19-year-old woman had parked her father's car filled with gas cylinders near Notre-Dame cathedral where there were still dozens of people. They had tried to set it on fire. The deadly explosion was avoided by a bad choice of fuel. Ines Madani was arrested four days later in Essonne (Paris region). She is accused of trying to kill a police officer, which she denies.

On the third day of this trial where eight people appear before the Paris Assize Court, the young woman's relatives all point to her fragility as a breeding ground for her radicalization. They describe a laughing child and a difficult adolescence, alone among five sisters to be a little round. She is away, badly in her skin. Her dream of becoming a pastry chef is broken by a back problem. She is out of school, isolated and takes refuge in social networks.

"We saw her sink"

And then " the bad meeting at the wrong time, " as his mother explains. Namely Anissa, an older woman left for Syria in 2015. " She fell into a gear, " " we saw her sink, " say her sisters. " Anissa had a real hold on her, " her mother added. In tears, she apologizes to her daughter: " I should have tried to understand his malaise rather than being his enemy, I told him hard things that should not be said to his child. "

In early 2016, when Ines Madani is notified of a ban on leaving the territory, the family is relieved, says a sister. " The worst thing we feared was that she's going to Syria. With the police, we thought that she would be monitored . The family says they experienced the passage like a club. During these testimonies, Ines Madani, often won by emotion, will have hardly looked at her relatives. " Today, she's better. She resumes her studies in prison until the years pass. She's very sorry , "her mother sobbed.