Arras attack: the mother of the attacker asks again to become a civil party

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Loïc Venance/AFP 7:57 p.m., January 31, 2024

The Paris Court of Appeal examined on Wednesday the request for civil action from the mother of the man who killed Professor Dominique Bernard on October 13 in Arras in Pas-de-Calais, who considers himself a collateral victim. of his son's actions. His lawyer, Me Mikaël Benillouche, estimated that Mohammed Mogouchkov's act had repercussions on the mother and one of the attacker's sisters, who are not being prosecuted at this stage.

“They are victims for three reasons: they had to leave their home, the mother is presented today as a woman raising terrorists and her youngest daughter was taken from her, who is placed in a shelter,” said the lawyer. in front of the press, at the end of the closed hearing. The investigating chamber must render its decision on February 7, according to Me Benillouche.

The discovery of a knife in his son's bedroom

“Retaining the constitution of a civil party would be a show of audacity” for the court of appeal, recognized the lawyer, because “the link between the act of terrorism and the consequences suffered by my client is indirect and the public prosecutor's office is opposed to it. The mother was heard on January 9 as a witness in the judicial investigation targeting two of her sons, the attacker Mohammed Mogouchkov, and his younger brother, indicted for complicity in assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

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Before this interrogation, she had been placed in police custody, just after the events. She then told the police that she had never seen a weapon in her home or on Mohammed, according to a police summary from October 17 of which AFP was aware. She had indicated that she had discovered a knife in her young son's bedroom a few days before the attack, and had hidden the weapon.

A “control” of her ex-husband on Mohammed Mogouchkov

The mother also confided that she had “religiously divorced” from her husband, Yaqoub Mogouchkov, out of a “taste for modern life” and described a “control” of her ex-husband over Mohammed. File S for Islamist radicalization, the father was expelled from France in 2018 to Russia, where he stayed for a year. At the end of October, he declared to AFP from Armenia that he condemned his son's actions, blaming his ex-wife for not having "succeeded in controlling the children". Mohammed Mogouchkov, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, had been listed for Islamist radicalization since February 2021 after a report from National Education.