At the bar
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Since Tuesday, the special assize court in Paris has been looking into Yassine Atar, whose big brother is none other than the mastermind of the attacks. The Belgian-Moroccan claimed his innocence, supported by his sister and his uncle.
A crystalline voice rises from the screen above the specially composed assize court on Wednesday. The first words of this woman with veiled hair, by videoconference from Belgium, go to the civil parties. “I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the victims, I would also like to strongly condemn these barbaric, unjust and inhuman acts”, says Iman, 39, a stay-at-home mom of three. She is the older sister of Yassine Atar, one of the fourteen defendants present at the trial of the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, and the sister of a great absentee, Oussama Atar, sponsor of the killings of November 13 and former senior executive. of the Islamic State, presumed dead in Syria. “Don’t talk to me about him anymore as my brother please, intimates the witness to the president of the court, Jean-Louis Périès. From the start, my brother Yassine was designated guilty, not because we had evidence against him, but by suspicion, by association, by proxy because he is the brother of, the cousin of…”
It is true that the shadow of Osama, the one who “destroyed their life, destroyed their family”, prowls as much in the room as over the shoulders of his younger brother Yassine who, from his first words on Tuesday, said to himself “looking forward to [s’]Express”, he who “claims [son] total innocence from day one. It has been six years since this car salesman, accused in particular of having held a key to the hideout where he took refuge…