The Hyper Cacher de Vincennes (photo illustration) -

KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP

On Monday during the trial of Algerian student Sid-Ahmed Ghlam accused of an attempted attack on a church in Villejuif in Val-de-Marne in April 2015, the court looked into another protagonist: Abdelnasser Benyoucef, the sponsor of the operation.

The latter could also be at the origin of the attack against the Hyper Cacher three months earlier.

Now presumed dead, he is tried in absence before the special assize court in Paris.

This Daesh cadre, alias “Abou Mouthana”, is the man that Sid-Ahmed Ghlam met during his stays in Turkey in 2014. It was he who asked him to commit an attack against “a good church with of the world ”in France.

"We are sure he is dead"

“Sid-Ahmed Ghlam was an interesting profile (for the jihadists).

Student, residing legally in France, he could move easily with his real passport, ”detailed an investigator from the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI) interviewed by videoconference.

Abdelnasser Benyoucef is no stranger to the anti-terrorism services.

Jihad veteran, this Franco-Algerian born in 1973 fought in Syria or Afghanistan and tried to go and fight in Chechnya after studying the Koran in Egypt.

He is presumed dead in the Iraqi-Syrian zone in 2016. “We are certain that he is dead but we have no proof,” said the DGSI investigator.

Abdelnasser Benyoucef was "a key player" in the "cell attack against France", she added.

A role in the failed attack on the church of Villejuif

His widow, Sonia M., detained since returning from Syria at the end of 2019 although she said she was sorry, says that Abdelnasser Benyoucef was one of the sponsors of the murderous hostage-taking perpetrated by Amédy Coulibaly against the Hyper Cacher in January 2015 in Paris.

"He told me he helped make it happen," she told investigators.

He also told her, she added, that he had a role in the failed attack on the church in Villejuif, in which a young 32-year-old mother, Aurélie Châtelain, perished.

Sid-Ahmed Ghlam still denies

Sid-Ahmed Ghlam denies having murdered this young woman and implicates an accomplice named "Abu Hamza".

According to his version, this accomplice accidentally shot Aurélie Châtelain after having stolen his car.

“Abou Hamza” was the pseudonym of Samy Amimour, one of the attackers of Bataclan, a Parisian theater (90 dead), during the attacks of November 13, 2015 in the French capital which left 130 dead in total.

However, investigators doubt this version of the facts.

Only Sid-Ahmed Ghlam's DNA was found on the murder weapon.

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