At the start of his trial in Paris on Monday, the Algerian student who attacked a police officer with a hammer in front of Notre-Dame in 2017 defended himself from being "radicalized" and said he wanted to denounce the death of thousands of Muslims in Iraq and Syria.
On June 6, 2017, on the forecourt of Notre-Dame, Farid Ikken jumped on a group of three police officers, hitting one of them with a hammer in both hands, shouting "It's for Syria!"
The policeman, slightly injured in the head, and one of his colleagues open fire.
Wounded in the thorax, Farid Ikken is arrested.
The trial of the now 43-year-old man opened on Monday.
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: a policeman attacked with a hammer in front of Notre-Dame testifies
Standing in the box of the accused of the special assize court of Paris, Farid Ikken does not seem in great shape after more than three years of detention spent largely in solitary confinement.
When the president of the court asks him to state his identity and his nationality, he answers in a shrill and stifled voice.
"I am a Muslim, I belong to the Muslim community of the umma", he blurted, "administratively, I am Algerian".
He then challenges his lawyers and declares that he wants to defend himself alone.
Then he refuses to answer questions.
"Resistance"
This hammer attack, he underlines at the bar, is "a political commitment", an "act of resistance" intended to draw the attention of the French public opinion on the fate of the "thousands of Muslims" killed in Western bombardments in Iraq and Syria.
As the morning progresses, the accused becomes more talkative, as if it had taken time for him to get used to speaking again after years of total silence.
Since his arrest, Farid Ikken has spent most of his detention in solitary confinement, with the judiciary still considering him to be potentially at risk.
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Multi-graduate student
The continuation of the trial, which is due to end on Wednesday, must in particular address what made this multi-graduate and uneventful student fall into violence.
And on his motivations: accused in particular of "attempted murder", Farid Ikken claims to have "hit softly" to injure, and not kill, the police.
A version that investigators can hardly believe.
Interviewed in the afternoon at the bar, one of them, a counterterrorism policeman, underlined "the violence of the hammer blow" to the head of the policeman, "who was only slightly injured because 'he had the reflex to curl up when his colleague saw the attacker coming and shouted "to warn him.