Considered one of the main members of the “Gang de Roubaix”, a criminal group responsible for numerous robberies and attempted attacks in the 1990s, Lionel Dumont was released from prison after 25 years in detention.
A child of the north, originally from Tourcoing, Lionel Dumont is the eldest of eight siblings raised in the pure French Catholic tradition. While he was predestined to study journalism, he entered the University of Lille in 1991, where he studied history. But it was in 1993 that everything changed. After doing his military service at the 4th RIMA in Fréjus, where he went to Djibouti as part of a multinational UN intervention in Somalia, he revolted against the inaction of civil society in response to the atrocities committed on square. A click for the young northerner who will convert to Islam on his return, frequenting the Dawa mosque in Roubaix.
Marked by this experience, in April 1994 he joined the paramilitary battalion of the Arab mujahideen in Zenica in Bosnia and became close to the Algerian emir Abou el-Maali. He trains in combat and changes his identity. He now calls himself Abu Hamza and marries a 16-year-old Bosnian according to the Muslim rite.
Attempted attack in 1996
Upon his return to France the following year, he participated in the founding of the Gang de Roubaix with several French converts to Islam, and embarked on multiple armed robberies to finance the Islamist cause. It was finally in 1996 that Lionel Dumont and his gang would sadly go down in history. Between January and March, the gang is guilty of several bloody attacks, including an impressive shootout against police officers in a parking lot in the town of Croix (North). The attack will kill one passerby.
The year 1996 will also be marked by an attempted car bomb attack against the Lille police station, where he narrowly missed being arrested, before fleeing to Bosnia and perpetuating several hold-ups and the murder of a policeman, for which he will eventually be arrested and taken into custody. Sentenced to twenty years in prison, he escaped from Sarajevo prison in 1999 and returned to France, to his native region in the North.
Sentenced in France to 25 years in prison
Between 2000 and 2003, knowing that he was actively sought after, the neo-jihadist became more discreet and approached the Indonesian Islamist movement of Jemaah Islamiyah, with the desire to perpetuate new attacks on French territory. He was finally arrested in 2004 after a long run and sentenced to 25 years in prison by the Paris Assize Court for his numerous crimes committed, among others, with the Roubaix Gang.
Now 51, this jihad veteran was released a few months early from Condé-sur-Sarthe prison (Orne) and is now placed on an electronic bracelet.