Abdelhamid Abaaoud "did not tell what he had in mind"

• The trial of the November 13 attacks opened on September 8 before the specially composed Assize Court.

  Twenty men appear, six of whom are being tried in their absence.

• With the exception of Salah Abdeslam, the members of the attack commandos are all dead.

  The court nevertheless looked at their path and their entourage for a long time.

• Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed during the Raid's assault on Saint-Denis on November 18.

At the specially composed Assize Court in Paris,

Even today, Yassine Abaaoud does not hide his skepticism. His brother, Abdelhamid, is he really the operational chief of the attacks of November 13, 2015, as everyone describes him? Did he really die in the assault led by the Raid, three days after the attacks which left 131 dead in Saint-Denis and Paris? "In my family, we are a little in doubt, we have never seen photos, no one has seen his body", confides the young man of 26 years, heard this Thursday as a witness by the court of specially composed seats. White sweatshirt, short hair and black mask which eats up half of his face, he was invited to tell, from Brussels where he was heard by videoconference, the journey of his elder, key character of this fatal night.

But from Abdelhamid Abaaoud, we will ultimately learn very little. Just as he left the family home at the age of 16, became radicalized after a stay in Egypt, probably in 2012, that he had “a lot of character” and was “authoritarian”. "My brother did not tell me what he had in mind, his legal projects, not legal, I did not know anything", assures his younger brother. For a little over an hour, Yassine Abaaoud multiplied the silences and the unspoken. “Did you know what he was doing in Syria? “, Asks the president, Jean-Louis Périès. " No. "Maybe you thought he was sightseeing," he insists, with a hint of irony. " I do not know. However, he must have been confronted with the videos of the abuses committed by his eldest child and which have become viral on social networks. “I didn't see them.The magistrate perseveres, again and again. "But what happened in your brother's head to make him come to this?" "He just evokes a" troubled period on the geopolitical level ", without further clarification.

A family "broken" after the kidnapping of the youngest of the family

Between the lines, the young man nevertheless admits that if he did not know precisely the projects of his elder, he was not unaware of his inclinations.

At least, not since the beginning of 2014, when after a short stay in Belgium, Abdelhamid Abaaoud kidnapped their 13-year-old brother, Younes, to take him to Syria.

"His disappearance broke our hearts, he was not responsible, he did not know where he was going", explains Yassine, recounting, with a tight throat, a "broken" family, which still hopes for the return of the youngest, however declared dead on "zone".

“We were traders without history and everything has changed.

I live in Belgium, without my parents, they separated, it's not easy.

"

Yassine Abaaoud was however sentenced in 2016 to two years in prison, in Morocco, for not having denounced the kidnapping of his little brother and for "apologizing for terrorism".

A sentence that he considers unfair and unfounded.

He assures, on the contrary, to have resisted when his brother tried to rally him to his cause, when he was not even of age.

"I was 17, I was going to take my baccalaureate, I had activities, a girlfriend," he recalls at the bar.

To escape his control, he avoided places where he could meet him, stayed away from his neighborhood, he explains.

"I don't know if he was talking to me or if he thought I was bugged"

But his eldest does not cut the bridges so far.

In January 2015, shortly after the

attacks

, he received in prison, where he was in pre-trial detention for a common law case, an appeal from Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

During this exchange, which will prove to be the last between them, he assures her that this attack "was only the beginning".

"I don't know if he was talking to me or if he thought I was bugged," he told the court.

So many elements which explain, that on the evening of November 13, on learning that attacks had just been perpetrated in Paris, he thought "in a corner of [his] head" that his brother was behind the attacks perpetrated in Paris. Paris.

"But I was not sure," he insists.

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• Terrorism

• Abdelhamid Abaaoud

• Paris

• Attacks of November 13

• Trial

• Justice

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