After three days of hearing on the hostage-taking of the Hyper Kosher of January 9, 2015, the special Assize Court of Paris is interested from Thursday September 24 in the profile and motivations of the three perpetrators of the attacks: the Kouachi brothers, who had attacked Charlie Hebdo, and Amédy Coulibaly, for the victims of Montrouge and the kosher store.
During a series of eagerly awaited hearings, three of their former mentors are summoned: Peter Chérif, imprisoned and indicted in a disjointed part of the case, which must be heard by videoconference, Farid Benyettou, who introduces himself like a repentant, and Djamel Beghal, veteran of the Afghan jihad.
These last two are free, but only the first should come to the bar.
The shadow of Peter Chérif
Presented in turn as a mentor to the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, the instigator of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, an Al-Qaeda executive or even a jihad veteran, Peter Chérif remains a shadow hovering over this issue.
Arrested in 2018 in Djibouti with his wife and their two children, Peter Chérif will be heard from the prison where he is being held, pending his trial for criminal conspiracy.
This man has often had trouble with the law.
Born in Paris in 1982, Peter Chérif tried to enter the army in 2002, in the footsteps of his grandfather.
But, wounded, he abandoned the desire for a military life, and converted to Islam in 2003. Like the Kouachi brothers, he was seduced by the words of Farid Benyettou, charismatic mentor, now repentant, of the so-called sector " des Buttes Chaumont ".
It was there that he met the future Charlie Hebdo killers.
Via this channel of delivery to the jihad zones, Peter Chérif flies to the Middle East.
Damascus for a few months, then Iraq, where he spent several weeks on the front lines of the Battle of Fallujah, in November 2004.
Wounded during the fighting, he eventually surrendered to the Americans.
Sentenced by Iraqi justice, he spent a few years in some of the most infamous prisons of the time: Abu Ghraib, then Badoush.
From the latter, he escaped in 2007, like several dozen members of Al-Qaeda imprisoned with him.
Peter Chérif then decides to leave Iraq.
He returned to neighboring Syria, where he surrendered to the French authorities.
Arrived in Paris, he was immediately indicted, in a separate part of the investigation into the Buttes Chaumont industry.
He was sentenced, in March 2011, to five years in prison for terrorist association.
But flees France before being imprisoned.
In the middle of the Arab Spring, he left for Tunisia, his mother's country of origin.
But it is towards Libya that he looks at first, before finally opting for Yemen, the land of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqpa).
Executives of the organization, which will claim the attack against Charlie Hebdo, contact him, he explains to the French justice.
He, who speaks Arabic, could he serve as translators for the French who had come to join the ranks of the jihad, like Chérif Kouachi, who is suspected of having visited Yemen in 2011?
Peter Chérif claims to have only met the Kouachi once, nothing more.
Prolix on daily life in Yemen, between multiple moves, different research work on drones for the management of Aqpa, he is evasive, if not silent on anything that could, directly or indirectly, link him to crimes committed in France.
A silence and gray areas on his passage in Yemen which leave more than doubts about a possible involvement in the January 2015 attacks. He has also been indicted in a separate part of this investigation since the summer 2019.
Farid Benyettou, the Buttes-Chaumont industry
Around 2003-2004, Chérif Kouachi began to associate with radical Islamists, in particular Farid Benyettou, self-proclaimed emir of a small cohesive group of young people in their twenties who live, pray and train together in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. .
Sensitized since childhood to political Islam in his family, Benyettou stood out from high school for his religious proselytism.
When he dropped out of school, he moved away from his family and then moved closer to the rigorist Salafists, saying he had found "a meaning in his life" there.
He adopts the traditional long shirt, the beard, the red and white keffiyeh.
Maintenance agent by day, preacher by night, he gets closer to former Algerian armed group (GIA) close to Al-Qaeda.
His small group cultivates hatred of the West and organizes the sending of jihadists to Iraq.
This sector of Buttes-Chaumont was dismantled in 2005. Farid Benyettou was sentenced to six years in prison and Chérif Kouachi, arrested just before leaving for Iraq, for three years.
Benyettou was released from prison in 2009. He has said he has since repented of jihadism, especially since the killings of Mohammed Merah in early 2012. He continues to see Chérif Kouachi, whom he describes as "his brother", until 2014. He will say that he has tried in vain to divert him from radical ideas.
Just after the January 2015 attacks, Benyettou, then in nursing training, presented himself to the intelligence services, saying he was ready to help with the investigation.
He beats his guilt, believing to have "a share of responsibility" by having "preached hatred", while emphasizing having "paid (his) debt to society" in prison.
Farid Benyettou will ultimately not be a nurse: the council of the order is opposed to it in view of his criminal record.
He then worked with anthropologist Dounia Bouzar for the prevention of radicalization.
In early January 2017, he published a book on his career, "My jihad: itinerary of a repentant", and shocks relatives of victims of the attacks by wearing a badge "Je suis Charlie" during a television program.
Djamel Beghal, the veteran met in prison
During his detention in Fleury-Mérogis, in the Paris suburbs, after his conviction in 2005, Chérif Kouachi met Amedy Coulibaly, detained for theft.
But also Djamel Beghal, a veteran of international jihadism.
Aged around 40, Beghal spent the first 21 years of his life in Algeria before moving to France.
He entered the sights of the authorities in the 1990s for his proximity to the GIA.
He travels a lot, in Europe but also in Pakistan and Afghanistan, cradles of international jihadism.
In 2001, he was arrested in the United Arab Emirates.
He admits, before retracting, explaining that he was tortured by Emirati investigators, having been mandated by Al-Qaeda to prepare attacks in France.
Extradited to France, he was sentenced there in 2005 to 10 years in prison.
In Fleury-Mérogis, Chérif Kouachi, Amedy Coulibaly and other young detainees are impressed by the CV and the "religious science" of their elder, who becomes their mentor according to investigators.
Released in 2009, Beghal is under house arrest in Cantal, where Coulibaly will come to see him several times in 2010. The two men will be arrested that year for participating in an escape project by Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, former GIA condemned. life sentence for the attack at the Musée d'Orsay RER station in October 1995 in Paris.
Djamel Beghal receives a second sentence of ten years in prison and is stripped of French nationality.
In July 2018, at age 52, at the end of his sentence in France, he was deported to Algeria, where he had been sentenced in absentia in 2003 to 20 years in prison for "belonging to a terrorist group".
He was detained there then retried and acquitted in December 2019, according to his lawyer, Farouk Ksentini.
Released in the wake in all discretion, Beghal now lives normally in Algeria pending his appeal trial, and "will not be able to testify" Thursday in Paris, said Me Ksentini, who specifies that "nothing will happen. 'obliges it ".
With AFP
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