Three suspects have been indicted in the investigation into the taking hostage of French journalists during the war in Syria in 2013, but the French government refuses to repatriate, for a possible trial, a fourth alleged jailer, yet located.
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According to several lawyers, if the investigations are coming to an end, the current appearance in the United States of a jihadist member of the “Beatles», specializing in the capture and execution of foreign hostages, could nevertheless bring new elements to the anti-terrorist examining magistrate Bertrand Grain and to the investigators of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI).
For eight years, they have been working to identify the kidnappers of Didier François, Pierre Torres, Édouard Elias and Nicolas Hénin, kidnapped in June 2013 and released in April 2014 after months spent, among other things, in cells of the ophthalmological hospital of Aleppo transformed into the headquarters of the jihadist group Front al-Nosra.
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“Alleged clues”
At this point, in France, three suspects have been indicted, all for “terrorist conspiracyand remanded in custody. Among them, the French Mehdi Nemmouche, sentenced to life imprisonment in Belgium for the massacre of the Jewish museum in Brussels. He has been indicted since 2017 for “kidnapping and sequestration in an organized gang and in connection with a terrorist enterprise“, in this file which “relies almost exclusively on the statements of the four journalists in which there appear distortions and flagrant contradictions“, according to his lawyer Me Francis Vuillemin.
Frenchman Abdelmalek Tanem, 32, would also have, according to elements of the investigation known to AFP, attended Aleppo hospital and been in contact with Nemmouche and Salim Beghalem – also a presumed jailer but deemed dead. “Yes, he was in Syria at the time, and yes, he joined IS. He has already been convicted for this and has served his sentence. Does that make him a Western hostage jailer? No“, reacted to AFP his lawyer Me Noémie Coutrot-Cieslinski, rejecting”so-called clues that don’t add up.»
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Since 2019, French justice has also incriminated the Syrian Kais Al-A., indicted for “complicity“. Born in 1983, this former executive of the Syrian Petroleum Company and professor of chemistry at the university had taken refuge since 2015 in Germany, where he was pursuing higher education. Nicknamed “the chemist” and presented according to elements of the file as an expert in explosives of the Islamic State, he would be behind the kidnapping of MM. Hénin and Torres occurred in the streets of Raqqa. Facing the judge, he maintained that he had always belonged only to the Free Syrian Army.
Arrest warrant
But it misses the interrogation of another French suspect, Guillaume Kapo, who surrendered in 2019 to the Syrian Democratic Forces, dominated by the Kurds, as Mediapart had pointed out. He is still imprisoned in Derik, in the far northeast of Syria, according to a source familiar with the matter. “The execution of the arrest warrant against him is today prevented by political choices of the government“, regret the lawyers of Nicolas Hénin, Me Vincent Brengarth and William Bourdon, judging”essential that he is confronted with the elements of the file but also with his victims“. Born in 1989 in Abidjan, Guillaume Kapo lived in Nîmes and would have joined Syria in 2012. According to the elements of the investigation, in the summer of 2013 he would have been part of the “Amniyat“, the formidable intelligence services of the EI, in Aleppo and frequented the jails of the hospital, before leaving to fight in particular in Deir-el-Zor, where he would have been seriously injured.
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Questioned by AFP, the Quai d’Orsay recalled its doctrine, according to which “Daesh fighters (…) must be judged as close as possible to the places where they perpetrated their crimes“. “It is both a question of security and a duty of justice towards the victims.“. But for Me Pascal Garbarini, lawyer for Edouard Elias, “for the proper administration of justice, all identified persons must appear at the same time in the same trial“. Pierre Torres’ lawyer, Me Clément Testard, is worried “of a political reversal” on the spot: “Mr. Kapo could find himself totally free, without any other form of trial“.