November 13 trial: the prosecution delivers its version of the puzzle
The entrance to a courtroom in the trial of the November 13 attacks, at the Paris courthouse, on May 17, 2022. AFP - GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT
Text by: Nathanaël Vittrant Follow |
Marine de La Moissonnière Follow
8 mins
What really happened in the days leading up to the "November 13 nightmare"?
The survey only partially answered this question.
The defendants, several of whom were walled up during the hearing in a tenacious silence, did not make it possible to see much more clearly, delivering, for those who spoke, changing and often contradictory versions.
The court will be responsible for telling the judicial truth.
In the meantime, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office has delivered its precise and implacable version of the events.
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“
Salah Abdeslam is trying to pass himself off as a terrorist fallen from the sky
,” retorts Nicolas Le Bris, one of the three general attorneys.
Neither holder nor substitute, he would only be a “
spectator invited at the last minute to enter the field
”.
But this does not hold,
for the prosecution which dismantles the version delivered by the main defendant during the trial
.
The Frenchman explained that he was only made aware of the attacks on November 12 and was forced to participate in them, before finally giving up on blowing himself up.
"
It's not credible
," thunders Nicolas Le Bris.
"
Never Abdelhamid Abaaoud
", the operational head of the terrorist cell, "
would have taken the risk of inviting a last-minute candidate so close to the goal!
“For the representatives of the national anti-terrorist prosecution,
Salah Abdeslam
was therefore planned from the start and did not replace Mohamed Abrini at the last moment as the latter claims to clear his childhood friend.
For the prosecution, the two men should have
blown themselves up on November 13
, It's a certainty.
The proof: they took no precaution to conceal their identity when it was necessary to rent the cars and the apartments in the Parisian suburbs which conveyed and lodged the terrorists.
And for good reason, they were not to come back.
The proof, too: the turmoil within the cell caused by the hasty departure of Abrini on the night of November 12 to 13 and his replacement by one of the suicide bombers who passed from one hideout to another, from a target – the Bataclan – to another – the Stade de France.
The conditions of his return to Belgium also demonstrate for the public prosecutor that Mohamed Abrini himself had not anticipated it: he wants to take the train, without realizing that at this time no one is driving anymore, and he returns by taxi without even have the keys to his house.
“They lodged the beast, they fed the beast, they armed the beast”
The attacks of November 13, the Advocates General are convinced, should not have struck only France.
This is another gray area of this case that the prosecution wants to paint with certainties: the movement of Ossama Krayem and Sofien Ayari to Schiphol international airport on the evening of November 13, 2015. Two seasoned jihadists, trained , trained in Syria, elite fighters of the Islamic State group, two candidates for martyrdom sent at great expense to Europe to accomplish a mission there.
"
And they want us to believe that we only sent them to Schiphol to check a luggage locker story, that's not credible
", Nicolas Le Bris storms.
The two men in this trial have remained silent, "
we will therefore not know why they gave up
“, is forced to recognize Nicolas Le Bri, s that this does not prevent seeing in this trip a complicity with the attacks of Paris and Saint-Denis.
“
It is often said that Salah Abdeslam is the only survivor of the terrorist commandos.
We should say that he is the only survivor of the French commandos
”, concludes the Advocate General.
“
Ossama Krayem and Sofien Ayari are the two survivors of the Dutch commandos
.
»
In this case where Salah Abdeslam has sometimes seemed to monopolize all the attention, Nicolas Braconnay, another spokesperson for the prosecution, wants to remind that there are no "second knives".
"
Without the rental of cars, apartments, without false papers, transport, the clothing of terrorists, without the search for weapons, ammunition, explosive products, there could not have been an attack
", he asserts.
“
All have agreed to support a terrorist action, whether out of conviction, cowardice or greed.
They lodged the beast, they fed the beast, they armed the beast
.
In the front row, Mohamed Bakkali who "
behaves like a kind of superintendent of terror
“said the Advocate General, alluding to the key role he is suspected of having played within the terrorist cell.
This cell which constitutes "
a real katiba
", will say the prosecution, using the term jihadist, a "
bridgehead
" of the Islamic State installed in the heart of Belgium.
“This person cannot be the first comer.
This is Salah Abdeslam”
Even before donning an explosive belt, Salah Abdeslam also played a key role, by going to Germany or Hungary to seek commandos who had arrived from Syria via the Balkan route, by blending into the mass of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting.
“
Whoever makes these returns is someone in whom the cell has complete confidence, who cannot defect at the risk of causing the whole project to fail
”, insists Camille Hennetier, the third voice of the accusation.
“
This person cannot be the first comer.
This is Salah Abdeslam.
»
In this relentless re-reading of events, the public prosecutor spares no one.
Wanting to lock everyone in the somewhat loose nets of the "terrorist association of criminals", the dreaded AMT, the prosecution does not hesitate to make some shortcuts.
Thus, Farid Kharkhach is prosecuted in this capacity although Nicolas Braconnay recognizes without difficulty that the man who delivered four of the fourteen false Belgian papers to the terrorist cell had no knowledge of the terrorist project and that he never sympathy for the cause.
But the public prosecutor, on the basis of selected testimonies, considers that he could not ignore the radicalization of his main interlocutor: Khaled El Bakkraoui, coordinator of November 13 and future suicide bomber of the Brussels attacks.
And this knowledge of the “terrorist context” is enough.
"
Above all, he acted out of cowardice and greed, for a gain of a few hundred euros
, ”says Nicolas Braconnay.
Before slipping that the prosecution would still take into account in the sentences requested the fact that he was only a "
patch
".
Ali El Haddad Asufi, too, will be prosecuted for terrorist criminal association.
The investigation did not succeed in proving that he had gone to look for weapons on behalf of the cell in the Netherlands.
This part of the investigations proved to be the most disappointing, recognizes the Advocate General.
It gave rise to a memorable exchange between the Belgian investigator who presented the results and one of Asufi's lawyers.
"
But it's also up to you to demonstrate that they are narcotics
," the inspector had dropped a little quickly in the face of questions from Me Jonathan de Taye, taking up his client's thesis.
“
No, it's up to you to prove that these are weapons
!
“, had failed to choke the Belgian lawyer.
The exchange has not been forgotten by the prosecution, which insists on the bundles of clues which, in its eyes, will be sufficient for the court to determine that the accused has, at a minimum,
sought to obtain weapons
.
“They are the first victims of November 13”
This reading of the accusation is not completely free from contradictions.
Thus, Nicolas Le Bris strives in his demonstration to show that Bilal Hadfi, suicide bomber from the Stade de France, should have been part of the Bataclan commandos, since he is French like the trio who sowed death in the concert hall. , that he traveled from Brussels to the Parisian suburbs in the same car as them, and that he passed by the same hiding place in Alfortville.
His transfer in disaster to the hideout of Bobigny after the departure of Mohamed Abrini would be the proof, in his eyes, that the target where he will blow himself up was not the one planned.
But a few tens of minutes later, he recalls that the terrorist was wearing a German football shirt, thus wanting to demonstrate that the members of the cell are interchangeable,
Finally, the Advocates General situate the start of the attacks much earlier.
They point out that the Islamic State propaganda videos, released after the attacks, feature all the terrorists, with the notable exception of Salah Abdeslam.
We see in particular beheadings and executions by firearms.
“
Killing can be learned.
Beheading, burning alive, executing with a bullet to the head: that's part of the training.
It is also a point of no return, the ultimate damnation and the fact that they are filmed compromises them definitively and must prevent them from giving up.
Seven prisoners of the terrorist group were thus killed in the summer of 2015 by the future assassins of Paris and Saint-Denis.
“
They are the first victims of November 13.
»
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France
Justice
Trial of the attacks of November 13