Europe 1 with AFP 8:16 p.m., April 8, 2022
At the November 13 trial, a witness described as "providential", "Sonia", recounted on Friday how she had, at the risk of her life, denounced the operational leader of the attacks to the police, a "heavy sacrifice" but that she "does not regret".
His crucial testimony had made it possible to locate Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
She still remembers the "cold look" and "inhuman" of Abdelhamid Abaaoud: at the trial of November 13, "Sonia" told Friday how she had, at the risk of her life, denounced to the police the operational leader of the attacks , a "heavy sacrifice" but that she "does not regret".
Blurred face, modified voice, it is a spectrum that appears on the screens of the special assize court of Paris.
His testimony made it possible to locate Abaaoud
"Sonia" says to be "48 years old", to be "agent".
A protected witness, she has changed her identity and her life since her crucial testimony, "providential" according to an investigator, which made it possible to locate Abdelhamid Abaaoud, on the run after having machine-gunned the Parisian terraces, and to avoid new attacks.
“Public enemy number one”, hunted down, the operational chief of the commandos of Paris and Saint-Denis will be killed in a police attack on November 18, 2015.
More than six years later, "Sonia" describes to the court this evening, two days after the attacks which left 130 dead, where she crossed paths with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, holed up in a bush in Aubervilliers, along the highway A86.
She accompanies a lost and unstable young woman whom she has taken under her wing and whom she is sheltering, Hasna Aït Boulahcen.
She was just supposed to pick up "her 17-year-old cousin who has problems", but finds herself facing Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a French figure in jihadism supposed to be in Syria.
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Abaaoud was there "to finish what he started"
"He is there, in front of me. (...) He shook my hand, which I regret", declares "Sonia", who still has "nightmares" about it.
He introduces himself, she asks him if he took part in the attacks.
"He answers me: 'Yeah, the terraces, it's me'", reports the key witness.
He assures "that he is here to finish what he started".
"I tell him that he killed innocent people, that Islam is not that," says the mother.
She goes home and the next day, November 16, she waits for Hasna Aït Boulahcen to leave her home to call the toll-free number set up by the police.
"I explained who I had met, they did not believe me", laments "Sonia".
A detailed description of Abaaoud
She is summoned in the evening and delivers many elements, a physical description of the jihadist, the fact that he wears a jacket, a "cream-colored bob" and "orange sneakers", spotted on the metro video surveillance and only known investigators.
For them, "caution remains in order", indicates a commissioner also heard as a witness on Friday, former deputy to the anti-terrorism sub-directorate (Sdat) of the judicial police.
If Abdelhamid Abaaoud, "number one target" of European intelligence is in France, it would be "a cataclysm", explains the investigator.
It could also be "an ambush by the Islamic State (IS)".
Surveillance is taking place, especially near the "conspiratorial bush" of Aubervilliers, and "Sonia" continues to give information to the anti-terrorist police, obtained from Hasna Aït Boulahcen.
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New attacks were planned a few days later
The latter is mandated to find accommodation for her cousin, and "costumes" for new attacks planned in the district of La Défense, on November 19, targeting "a shopping center, a police station".
"I couldn't have let that happen," says "Sonia" in a metallic voice.
On November 18, 2015 before dawn, the Raid launched an assault on the apartment in Saint-Denis where Abdelhamid Abaaoud took refuge with his accomplice Chakib Akrouh, another survivor of the terrace commando, and Hasna Aït Boulahcen.
All three die.
"Sonia" spends "forty-eight hours in police custody".
Then she is released and will be taken care of by a specialized service of the Ministry of the Interior.
In February 2016, she gave an interview in which she said she was "abandoned" by the state.
She benefited a few months later from a new status, becoming the first "protected witness" in France.
Her testimony "cost her dearly, very dearly", both for her and for her children and her companion, she told the court.
"It's a heavy sacrifice", but "I don't regret what I did, I will never regret it".
Before suspending the hearing, the president of the court, Jean-Louis Périès, "welcomes (his) courageous gesture".
"It allowed