Heard by the Paris Special Assize Court on Friday as part of the trial around the January 2015 attacks, jihadist Peter Chérif refused to answer the court's questions.
He was heard by videoconference after long negotiations.
Long awaited, the testimony of Peter Chérif gave nothing.
This jihad veteran, childhood friend of the Kouachi brothers, was heard on Friday as a witness by videoconference by the special assize court of Paris as part of the trial around the January 2015 attacks. Before walling into silence, he assured to have "nothing to do" with the attacks.
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Not a word, except words about the existence of god
Negotiations lasted all day for him to agree to come and testify in court via videoconference.
Handcuffed, this possible sponsor of the attacks opposed his refusal to answer questions until the end.
He first pronounced blessings in Arabic and French before ostensibly walling himself into silence while reading a little book, which one might assume to be a prayer book or a Koran.
The president of the court tried to read him his statements in police custody by inviting him to respond, but not a word came out of his mouth, apart from remarks on the existence of god.
He had the same mentor as the Kouachi brothers
It is on this observation of failure that this testimony ended after 20 minutes.
In the end, the only confirmation that the court was able to obtain on the sponsors of these attacks was summed up in the testimony in the morning of Sonia Mejri, the ex-wife of an ISIS leader, who confirmed that 'Amedy Coulibaly had indeed been recruited from Syria.
Currently imprisoned in the Paris region, after being indicted in a disjointed section of the investigation into the January 2015 attacks, Peter Chérif had informed the prison administration in recent days that he refused to go to the videoconference .
Presented as a possible sponsor of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, he was arrested in December 2018 in Djibouti with his wife and their two children and placed in detention awaiting trial for criminal conspiracy.
Peter Chérif shared with the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi the same mentor, Farid Benyettou, a former preacher of the "Buttes-Chaumont network", who transported jihadists to Iraq.