Standing in the box, the 37-year-old Belgian is the first of the 14 defendants present to be questioned on the merits of the case, four months after the opening of the trial for the November 13 attacks.
Abuses, rapes, attacks … First of the accused to be questioned at the November 13 trial and besieged with questions, Mohamed Abrini did not deny anything about the Islamic State (IS) group and justified the attacks, a “response to violence “western. For ten minutes, the president of the special assize court Jean-Louis Périès has been urging him to say what he really thinks about religion, jihad, ISIS. Finally, Mohamed Abrini complies. “Listen, those who blow themselves up, it is a response to the bombardments. If we do not have a soldier to kill on the spot, we carry out attacks. It is attacks against bombardments,” he says.
Standing in the box, the 37-year-old Belgian is the first of the 14 defendants present to be questioned on the merits of the case, four months after the opening of the trial. For this first phase of questioning, all will be heard only on what happened before the summer of 2015. For the “man in the hat” of the Brussels attacks, the shift in radicalization has taken place in 2014, on the death of his “little brother” killed in Syria.
Mohamed Abrini confirms, but qualifies: “for you it is radical. For me it is normal Islam”. “Islam such as it is taught by the prophet is not compatible with democracy. For you, a man who has three wives is + weird +, you manage to make controversies even for halal”, launches later this talkative brunette in a checkered shirt.
“I take the Koran in its entirety”, adds the accused, “proud” of his younger brother who “sacrificed himself to help the innocent” in Syria. The court recalls that his brother belonged to a brigade known for its cruelty, including towards civilians. “It’s war, that’s how it is,” eludes Mohamed Abrini. “It is a duty for all Muslims to go and do jihad.”
President Périès pushes. Does that justify attacking people on the terrace, at concerts? “” The disgusting things, it does not come only from one camp “. The president insists, recalls that the French bombardments in Syria” did not started only in September 2015 “. Mohamed Abrini loses his temper.” We have the impression of hearing children, + it is you who started it! +. Before there had been drone strikes that killed civilians “.
The president asks again: “and that justifies the attacks?” “Me that, I am not able to do it, I have always said it”, sweeps away the one who gave up blowing himself up during the attacks in Brussels and whose real reason for coming to Paris with the commandos in November 2015 remains unclear. “Going to Syria to see innocent people being killed, then coming back to kill innocent people – because they were innocent people … At one point in the brain, it stalls”, explains the accused.
He refused to condemn ISIS
The court, the parties, push him for hours but he refuses to condemn ISIS. The filmed beheadings of hostages? “You too have cut off your king’s head.” Rape of Yezidi women? “It was done in all the conquests … Historians qualify it as a birth rate project”.
“I accept everything, in the same way that you accept the whole of the history of France with its dark and luminous pages”, loose Mohamed Abrini.
To a lawyer for civil parties, he refuses to answer. “You disgust me,” she told him, startling the court. “You say to the media, these hyenas, that we are impervious to the pain of the victims. I’m sorry, it’s breaking my balls,” he loses his temper. “I was not there on November 13, I killed no one. I heard people complaining for two months at the stand.”
It is the turn of the civil parties in the room to jump. “Complain?”, We protest on the benches. Another lawyer asks if he has anything to say to the victims. Long silence. “It’s a funny question, I don’t know what to answer you”. A new silence. “It’s really sad what happened to them. They are double victims, of the foreign policy of France and that of the Islamic State”.
The lawyer pushes again, infuriating the accused. “Are you going to sleep well if I say I condemn? If I could, I would have bought universal peace. But I can’t afford it.”
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