Farid Ikken, the man who attacked a police officer with a hammer in front of Notre-Dame-de-Paris cathedral in June 2017 after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, was sentenced on Wednesday October 14 to 28 years in prison.
The Special Assize Court of Paris followed the requisitions of the Advocate General, who had called for severely punishing a man who she said had become a "total extremist", a "fanatic of the Islamic State group" locked in a single horizon: " jihad ".
The 43-year-old former Algerian student has no regrets and "the feeling of duty accomplished" towards his "Muslim brothers".
The defendant was found guilty of "attempted intentional homicides with premeditation on persons holding public authority" and "association of criminals in connection with a terrorist enterprise".
"Satisfaction with duty accomplished"
His prison sentence is accompanied by a two-thirds security period, and he also received a definitive ban from French territory.
Opened Monday, the trial promised to be singular in terms of the personality of the accused: a doctoral student and multi-graduate who fell into jihadist violence on June 6, 2017, astonishing all his relatives who described him as a gentle, pleasant man, open and democratic.
He became even more so on Tuesday, when he expressed neither apologies nor regrets, adding that he still had the "satisfaction of duty accomplished" three years after the attack, under the dumbfounded gaze of the two attacked police officers present at the 'hearing.
He also reaffirmed his full membership in the Islamic State group and its former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a "man of integrity" and "a model".
And refused to condemn the attacks of Mohammed Merah, Amédy Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers, believing that these "moudjahidines (combatants, editor's note) martyrs" had acted, like him, "in retaliation" for the Western attacks "against Muslims" in Iraq and in Syria.
Lasting sequelae for police officers
These remarks visibly challenged the court and weighed in the verdict, especially as the injured police officer and his two colleagues present at his side that day described before the court their after-effects (depression, hypervigilance) lasting since the attack.
"It is rare, including in terrorist trials, to have someone so satisfied with their action," said the general counsel.
On June 6, 2017 at 4:19 pm, Farid Ikken jumped on a group of three policemen, hitting one of them with a hammer while shouting "It's for Syria!"
The policeman, slightly injured in the head, and one of his colleagues had opened fire and wounded the assailant in the chest, before arresting him.
In his belongings and at his home, investigators found a number of jihadist propaganda material and a video recorded just before the attack where he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Farid Ikken denies any will to kill, claiming to have wanted to injure in an "act of political resistance" intended to "draw the attention of French public opinion" to the "thousands of Muslims killed at the time in Iraq and Syria by the French army "in its bombardments against the Islamic State organization within the Western coalition.
On the video of the attack, filmed by a remote surveillance camera, we see him gain momentum and leap to deliver a violent blow with a hammer with both hands on the head of one of the police officers.
An eternal precarious student
For the latter as for the Advocate General, the attempted homicide was beyond doubt.
If the policeman targeted was only slightly injured, "it is only because his colleague shouted and he reflexively bent his head" while the blow was heading towards the middle of the skull, estimated the magistrate .
She also asked that he be sentenced for participation in a terrorist enterprise in view of the "perfect paraphernalia of the radicalized" found at home.
On the personality side, she stressed that the accused had never managed to settle professionally or personally, remaining an eternal precarious student and more and more lonely.
"Failures" which led him to "lock himself up in jihadist ideology", until this year 2017 when, as a student in Paris, he drank in propaganda and bloody videos of civilian victims of Western bombings in Syria and Iraq.
Tuesday, Farid Ikken had explained that at the time of going on the attack, he was locked in "a psychological closed door", "upset" by these videos.
"For me, that was above everything."
With AFP
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