November 13: Mohamed Bakkali's defense implores the Court not to condemn "the car rental company as an assassin"
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
6 mins
The floor is still with the defense in the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015. This Tuesday, June 21, the lawyers of Mohamed Bakkali had the floor.
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office has requested life imprisonment with a 22-year security period against this man presented as "
the linchpin
" of the terrorist cell.
Record of hearing.
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With our special correspondent at the courthouse
Upon getting up, Me Orly Rezlan knows that the task will not be easy.
The public prosecutor demanded a particularly heavy sentence against his client, presenting him as the “
superintendent of terror
”.
Mohamed Bakkali, already sentenced at first instance to 25 years in prison in the case of
the Thalys attacks
(he appealed) this time chose to exercise his right to silence.
While his name kept coming up, he hardly spoke and never to defend himself.
"
I will not make myself the ventriloquist of the statements he has not made, but I will try to be a bridge between you and him
", begins the lawyer.
Without emphasis, but with determination, she deconstructs the image of the logistician of the attacks that sticks to her skin.
“
The logisticians, we know them, they are dead, they are undeniably the
El Bakraoui
brothers (Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, future suicide bombers of the Brussels metro and airport, editor's note).
He helped them, that's undeniable: by renting apartments under a false identity, cars under his real identity, he escorted men.
But all of this, maintains Me Rezlan, is only “
the tip of the iceberg
”.
“
Mohamed Bakkali has a very specific function: to hide the role of the El Bakraoui brothers.
In the November 13 case, he only intervenes upstream, between September and the very beginning of November 2015. But after the period of rental and installation of the terrorists, no DNA trace connects him to the caches. where the weapons were stored, where the explosives were made.
Of the terrorist cell, he would be only a "
link
".
“
We are told that without the logistics, there would have been no attack.
But without Mohamed Bakkali, there would have been attacks.
The Bakraoui brothers would have found another.
And after his arrest (November 26, 2015, editor's note) they found another one
, ”insists the lawyer.
“
He is the only one
”, she underlines, “
to be prosecuted for complicity in association with a terrorist criminal who is not accused of any act of participation
”.
So why did he help them, and what did he know?
Orly Rezlan does not risk claiming that he was
the “useful idiot
” of the Bakraoui brothers.
During one of his rare speeches at the start of the trial, when it was a question of evoking the personality of the accused, his intelligence struck everyone.
He also obtained a degree in sociology in prison.
She describes a religious man, a Salafist, but in whom we did not find the slightest jihadist propaganda.
Certainly, recognizes his lawyer, the phone he shared with his wife conveniently disappeared, "
but we never asked him to do so
”.
So in the panic of her arrest, she made him disappear.
What was there can therefore be used neither to clear it nor to incriminate it.
So, between the jihadist fully adhering to black theses like the flag of the Islamic State and the white goose that would not convince anyone, the lawyer wanted to propose "
a gray area
".
In the neighborhoods of Brussels in 2015, we are sensitive to the misfortunes of the Syrian people.
And in a climate of complacency, some do not hesitate to exploit the guilt and bad conscience of Muslims who do not sufficiently support “
their brothers in pain
”.
"
It was enough to pull the thread of guilt a little to get help at little cost
," continues Mr. Rezlan.
"
Things are done gradually, one thing then another, we tell ourselves that it will not go any further.
And Mohamed Bakkali, who would not have committed an attack, who would not have helped to commit an attack, provided his assistance
.
»
How far ?
“
We were able to tell him brothers come from Shâm (Syria, in the Islamist term, editor’s note), they need to hide.
But we couldn't tell him "brothers are coming and they're going to commit a mass attack and you're going to help us openly".
Mohamed Bakkali would not have accepted that
,” concludes the lawyer.
Following him, Me Abraham Johnson comes to feed this thesis by defending the idea of a strict "
partitioning
" of the terrorist cell where each one would never have known more than what he needed to know and where the only ones who knew all were destined to die.
He draws on this from the military term used by the Advocates General in their indictment.
They had described the establishment around the Bakraoui brothers of a veritable "
bridgehead
" of the Islamic State, an outpost of Daesh in the heart of Brussels.
“
If there is a beachhead, if there is a military organization, then inevitably you must retain the hypothesis that the terrorist division of labor attaches to a perfectly watertight compartmentalization
“, decides the lawyer.
Me Rezlan must then try to explain why, after his arrest on November 26 and when he presented himself to the police station as soon as he learned that he was wanted, Mohamed Bakkali did not denounce the Bakkali brothers.
Which had made the Advocates General say: “
You knew everything, you could prevent everything on
November 13 as on March 22
.
“
This sentence is not only cruel, it is easy
”, the lawyer is indignant.
“
The Bakraoui brothers knew his wife, his sister, his children, his parents-in-law, his places of life.
Confidence in this type of situation does not exist.
What exists is fear.
This version of the facts comes late in this trial and suffers from not having been brought by the accused himself during the hearings.
But the lawyer hits the mark when she tackles the meaning of the sentence that will be imposed on her client.
By asking for life, concludes the lawyer, “you were asked for blood money.
May justice be exemplary”.
“
Justice must pass, be exemplary, implacable, at the risk of forgetting that the primary function of justice is to be fair.
If, in the name of the emotion aroused by these crimes, we come to condemn, like the assassin, the accomplice of preparatory acts, the renter of cars and houses, then it will be necessary to admit that the Rule of law will have melted under the shock.
I ask you not to break the dikes of the rule of law, to make the effort not to slip
”.
►
To read the transcripts of the November 13 trial here
►
To read also:
Authors and alleged accomplices of the attacks of November 13
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