Called one after the other to the bar of the special assize court in Paris, Hamza Attou and Ali Oulkadi are two of the three defendants who have appeared since September 8 free under judicial supervision.
They are accused of having helped the only member of the commandos still alive, Salah Abdeslam, on the run after the attacks. The first went to retrieve it in the Paris region on the night of November 13 to 14, 2015, the second hid it in Brussels. These facts will not be addressed by the court until the end of March. At first, his questions are elsewhere: what “perception” did they have of the radicalization of the Abdeslam brothers?
“Radical remarks”
At the beginning of 2015, Ali Oulkadi, a regular customer of Brahim Abdeslam’s “Les Béguines” café, in the Brussels municipality of Molenbeek, noted the first “radical comments” from the future terrace killer, who died on November 13 after detonating his explosive belt. . In particular, he hears him say that a Muslim cannot practice his religion in Belgium, watches with him some videos of “exactions and propaganda” by Daesh.
“For me, he was in a temporary delirium. His actions contradicted his words.”
But Ali Oulkadi, 37 today, does not take it “seriously”: “every time Brahim (Abdeslam) made this kind of remark, he had no arguments and contradicted himself afterwards: he put the latest fashionable song, sang the lyrics with a joint in his hand”. “For me, he was in a temporary delirium. His actions contradicted his words, ”says the accused, his voice a little trembling at the bar.
Of “sign”, Hamza Attou saw him “none”. At most, the youngest of the accused, aged 21 at the time of the attacks, saw Brahim Abdeslam “watching Daesh videos”, but without “paying attention to them”. “It didn’t interest me”, assures in a polite and categorical tone, hands clinging to the desk, Hamza Attou, who was “every day” at the Béguines where he resold cannabis for his “friend” and “boss” Brahim Abdeslam.
” In hindsight “
At the end of January 2015, Ali Oulkadi and Hamza Attou accompanied Brahim Abdeslam to Zaventem airport, near Brussels. To say “goodbye” to him before his departure for Syria, as the fourth man on the trip, heard as a witness in mid-December, asserts? ” It’s wrong ! “, claim the two defendants for whom Brahim Abdeslam “went on vacation to Turkey”. “All alone, for a fortnight, without it surprising them? asks the president of the court, Jean-Louis Périès.
On his return, “he told me that he was in a hotel with a large swimming pool, that he had taken advantage of it”, replies Ali Oulkadi. The latter still asks to see “photos”, but Brahim Abdeslam assures him that he “gave his phone”. “I trusted him,” explains the accused.
With Hamza Attou, Brahim Abdeslam and his younger brother Salah then attend the concert of a rap singer passing through Brussels. “They masked their game well. It is with hindsight, in 2022, that I tell you that”, says the accused with a chubby face, his black hair brushed. The court insists: “You say ‘I didn’t see anything’. What could they have done or said for you to see radicalization? »
“Well that they are a threat to society, that they have threatening remarks towards an innocent person”, tries Hamza Attou, who repeats having “heard nothing” of such. Could he have “detected, identified” this radicalization?
After the accused, the former “radicalization prevention gentleman” from the municipality of Molenbeek, cited as a witness by the defence, delivers his analysis: “It is extremely complicated to identify a process of changeover, to make a diagnosis on a proven process of radicalization, so many biases there are. »