November 13 trial: lawyers for Abdellah Chouaa and Mohammed Amri plead for acquittal
A gendarme in front of the courtroom built for the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015, at the Palais de Justice in Paris, September 8, 2021. AFP - ALAIN JOCARD
Text by: Nathanaël Vittrant Follow
5 mins
The lawyers of Abdellah Chouaa and Mohammed Amri had the floor on Tuesday.
The challenge for the former was to avoid a return to prison for their client, for the latter to allow him to leave.
Against them, the national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office requested 6 and 8 years in prison respectively.
Record of hearing.
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“
I would like to talk to you about a free man, an innocent man who can lose everything.
I'm going to talk to you about Abdellah Chouaa
,” begins Me Gwenaël Poirier.
“
He has the most to lose, because he is the one who has carried out the least preventive detention.
If the Court follows the requisitions of the prosecution, he will indeed return to prison for several years.
Me Adrien Sorrentino quickly takes over, is indignant that the public prosecutor has been able to qualify Abdellah Chouaa as a liar.
“
I pledge my conviction as a lawyer, my probity
: Abdellah Chouaa does not lie.
He is naive
, he is afraid, he is sometimes stupid in his answers.
But he does not lie
, ”he asserts while his client has sometimes provided unconvincing explanations to the Court.
It describes a man hospitalized the weekend before his first major interrogation, seized with a panic attack, who disobeys the advice of his lawyer for fear of not appearing cooperative enough.
"
So he tries to provide explanations, he formulates hypotheses when with all the honesty in the world, he could have said
'I don't know anymore'
.
And the more he tries to help you, the more suspicious he is.
Above all, Abdellah Chouaa is criticized for his closeness to Mohamed Abrini and for having driven him to the airport in particular when he was traveling to Syria.
Could he ignore it?
“
He always saw Mohamed Abrini, smoking, drinking, playing poker, doing stupid things, on the arms of women.
He didn't see because we didn't want him to see.
»
Two denunciations
He holds out a photo of Mohamed Abrini, mockingly, in a fairground pass, a photo that is not in the file.
"
I understand that the investigators did not want to show Abrini as Mr. Chouaa saw him in 2015: a puppet in a carnival
," says Me Serrentino.
He recalls that Abdellah Chouaa, several months earlier, had denounced his brother to the police, fearing that he had gone to Syria.
When he realizes that Mohamed Abrini lied to him, that he may not be on vacation in Turkey, but that he too could have gone to Syria, he denounces him in turn.
It is on this basis that Mohamed Abrini is questioned on his return to Brussels.
The Belgian police are content at the time to place his home under surveillance.
“
We would like to condemn a man who denounced terrorism twice, who could have allowed as early as October 2015, before the attacks, to go back to the terrorist cell.
“Shouts the lawyer before concluding:”
Ten months of hearing and not a day without me finding new proof of his innocence.
Ten months of trial where he cried with the victims, where he went to meditate with some at the Bataclan and on the bereaved terraces.
Ten months of communion and we would like to condemn him
?
It would be incomprehensible.
»
Mr Jordan
Mohamed Amri
's lawyers
then take the stand.
He is particularly accused of helping the Abdeslam brothers to hire the vehicles that will be used to transport the terrorists.
Could he ignore their radicalization?
Me Negar Haeri is working to defuse this first point.
She takes up the definition of radicalization that he himself gave to the bar: “
Radicalized people don't go to cafes, don't drink alcohol and don't hang out with girls.
Now, the Abdeslam brothers did all that.
For her, Mohamed Amri is like Molière's Monsieur Jourdain: "
He makes a syllogism without knowing it
".
Because he is not the only one to be fooled by this false contradiction: the Belgian investigators who question Brahim Abdeslam on his return from Syria come to the same conclusion as him: he is not radicalized.
"
No one disputes the ambivalence of Brahim Abdeslam anymore
," continues the lawyer.
“
The question is whether Mohammed Amri was able to break through this ambivalence.
No, she replies.
She continues her reasoning by the absurd: “
If the Abdeslam brothers had finally decided not to use these cars, would Mohammed Amri still be in the box
?
»
"
Love and Humanity
"
Me Xavier Nogueras takes over and paints an unflattering portrait of his client, but which in his defense has the merit of presenting him as a useful idiot of the Abdeslam brothers rather than as a collaborator aware of the issues: "
Mohamed Amri, who loves his car to the point of sleeping inside, smoking spliffs, likes Jul, Jason Statham.
We have the right to tell you that there is a fracture without using sociological blackmail.
He comes, finally, to the heart of what his client is accused of: having gone to Paris to seek Salah Abdeslam, the only member still alive of the terrorist commandos,
to bring him back to Brussels
the night of the attacks.
“
There is in this closed cabin, a deleterious atmosphere.
There is no need to have an explosive vest or a weapon pointed at the temple to be afraid
, ”argues the lawyer.
"
This very bad trip that he had absolutely not anticipated can only end in arrest or death
", he says again to justify the state of amazement "
which comes to paralyze
him " and that the prosecution had mocked in its indictment.
Me Serrentino had paraphrased in the opening of his pleading the sermon on the mount of Jesus, playing on the formula: “
happy are the simple-minded
”.
Me Nogueras summons him in turn with a rereading as modern as it is personal “
He said that we had to give each other love, not Kalashnikov bullets, not hatred: love and humanity.
And it is in the name of this humanity that he calls for the acquittal of Mohammed Amri.
Like all the others, it will be set on June 29.
►Also read: Trial of the November 13 attacks: the floor is up to the prosecution
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