Jonathan Geffroy, a 40-year-old jihadist from Toulouse, and his wife Latifa have been appearing before the specially constituted Assize Court in Paris since Monday.
They are accused of having left for Syria in early 2015, with their 2-month-old child, to join Daesh.
Captured in early 2017, Jonathan Geffroy assured during the investigation that he was "repentant".
To attest to his sincerity, he gave the magistrate a lot of information about the French jihadists he met on the spot.
This Wednesday, he tried to explain to the court how the heavy consumer of alcohol and drugs that he was could become a convinced Islamist.
To the specially composed court of assizes,
Questioned by videoconference, the investigator of the DGSI quickly evacuates the question.
The confidences of Jonathan Geffroy on the plans of attacks of Daesh in France were not worth, she says, not much.
“He told us what we already knew,” she says.
The creation of the “cubs of the caliphate” who were to carry out attacks on the territory?
"He didn't specifically teach us anything new about it.
The attacks envisaged in the countryside?
There was “absolutely none”.
The location of the Clain brothers in Syria?
The information was given “much too late to be useful to our services”.
The revelations about the targets planned by the terrorists who blew themselves up in Brussels?
"He arrives a year and a half after the fight", underlines the investigator,
None of the information communicated to the DGSI by the 40-year-old Toulouse jihadist after his arrest at the Turkish border and his handover to the French authorities in September 2017 "could help the authorities" to resolve any investigation.
"He also made fanciful statements, on several occasions," insists the policewoman.
In his box, Jonathan Geffroy, yellow shirt with short sleeves, finely trimmed beard and hair combed back, shakes his head no.
Christophe Petiteau, the president of the specially composed assize court, before which he has since been tried for terrorist criminal association, asks him to stand up.
“We are going to talk today about your life course: your conversion, your relationships with your wives, your children”, explains the magistrate to him.
From clubs to mosques
Go back.
The parents of the accused, aged 40, divorced when he was ten years old.
A trauma that left him scarred.
It is moreover “certain” that his conversion to Islam is linked to this period.
His relationship with his sister was "conflictual".
His father could be violent.
“It was his way of educating us.
As for his mother, Denise P. – who is also on trial for financing a terrorist enterprise – she gives him “abnormal freedom in the evening for a 14-year-old child”.
Lacking benchmarks, he establishes “[his] own rules”.
As a teenager, he started growing cannabis, and sold a little to finance his weekend outings in nightclubs.
"I was not a heavy smoker," he says.
I didn't like the effects, I preferred those of alcohol.
His other passion,
It was during this period that he met a girl who practices Islam.
He begins to take an interest in this religion in which he finds the "answers" to the questions he was asking himself.
“Three or four months later, I decided to convert alone in my apartment in Toulouse,” he explains.
“In 2005 or 2006”, he left to live in Brive-la-Gaillarde to open a store and started going to the mosque.
“I blindly follow the people who frequent it.
He lost his job in 2013 "for somewhat complicated reasons" and returned to Toulouse.
He regularly goes to the Basso Cambo mosque, in the Mirail district, where many future jihadists have passed.
His practice of Islam then becomes more rigorous.
“I had the impression of marrying a concept”
He meets a new young woman whom he wants to marry.
But the father of this Moroccan is opposed to this union.
Impossible to stay with her if they are not married.
In order to "put himself in conformity with Muslim law", he will set his sights on another young girl whom he has only met once during an "interview".
His new wife wears the niqab, the full veil.
"The day she took off her veil, I knew there was a problem," he says.
Jonathan Geffroy is not particularly attracted to this young woman, very religious, who has a “child's body”.
“I felt like I was marrying a concept more than a person,” he continues.
“How long did this cohabitation with the concept last?
asks the president.
" A month.
»
He tries again with his ex-girlfriend, the one he could not marry.
The couple moved to Morocco.
“I needed to escape, I no longer found my place in France as a Muslim.
There, they have two children, born "between 2010 and 2012".
Surprisingly, the accused does not remember their date of birth.
“My companions have always reproached me for it, I have trouble remembering the dates.
It is also in Morocco that he meets his last wife, Latifa Chadli, who is also being prosecuted for AMT and incurs the same penalty as him.
“Was your goal to have a second wife or to leave the first?
asks the magistrate.
“I envisaged that, if things go badly, I could marry another person.
»
“Flight” to Egypt
He then explains to his wife that he intends to marry Latifa, but that he does not plan to divorce.
She refuses and tells the local police about it.
Fearing reprisals from his family, he “fled” with his new companion to Egypt, where he worked for a while for Tom-Tom GPS.
In February 2015, the couple and their first child, then only two months old, joined Syria and the ranks of Daesh.
“How could I have been so blind” to fight within the terrorist organization, he finally wonders.
" I was mistaken.
What we were sold is nonsense,” he says, with tears in his eyes and clasped hands.
“I was manipulated, enlisted, indoctrinated.
When you are radicalized, you no longer think, you just follow.
»
Jonathan Geffroy and Latifa Chadli incur thirty years of criminal imprisonment, Denise P. ten years in prison.
The trial is scheduled until January 23.
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