The trial of two suspected terrorists, accused of having wanted to commit an attack just before the first round of the 2017 presidential election, opened on Thursday, January 5, before the Special Assize Court of Paris. Clément Baur, 29, and Mahiedine Merabet, 35, two radicalized French people, were arrested on April 18, 2017 in Marseille.
The two men are each at one end of the box this Thursday, January 5. They are tried for four weeks for criminal terrorist association, alongside ten men suspected of having helped them to obtain weapons, eight of whom appear free under judicial supervision.
On the left, Mahiedine Merabet, a repeat offender. Small beard and white shirt, he speaks politely. When Clément Baur releases pithy sentences barely audible. Mahiedine Merabet wants us to listen to him. So for a quarter of an hour, he reads a text. The man, who risks life imprisonment, considers himself a ” Muslim political prisoner “. If he admits having possessed weapons and explosives, he denies having prepared an attack. But it is certain that he will be condemned for his opinions. It’s'” Islamophobia at issue in this trial “, he asserts.
Offensive “ imminent »
The two men had known each other in 2015 at the Lille-Loos-Sequedin remand center, in the north of France, where they shared the same cell for a few weeks for common law offenses. Suspected of an attack imminent they had been identified by investigators after cyber infiltration and extensive telephone surveillance. It is in particular the search at the beginning of April 2017 by Mahiedine Merabet for a contact to transmit to the Islamic State group a video of claim which had alerted the anti-terrorist services.
On April 12, a cyber-undercover agent was the recipient of a video showing dozens of munitions arranged on a table in such a way as to write “ Talion’s law “, next to a machine gun, an IS flag and the front page of the newspaper The world of March 16, 2017 with a photo of the candidate François Fillon, followed by a montage of children victims of bombardments in Syria. Six days later, Mahiedine Merabet and Clément Baur were arrested near the apartment they rented in Marseille. In their apartment: nearly four kilos of explosives and weapons.
A delinquent and an ace of dissimulation
On the stand, experts explain that religion served as his “ psychological rescue after a difficult childhood. Abandoned by his father, beaten by his mother, his grandmother will end up placing him in a home. So many elements that Mahiedine Merabet refuses to comment on. No way for him to indulge in his intimacy or to blame his ancestors, he says.
At the other end of the box, Clément Baur listens vaguely, obviously not very interested in the trial. The personality of this ace of concealment, who learned Russian on his own, then Arabic, who posed as a Chechen refugee in France, Germany and Belgium, will be examined this Friday. The verdict is expected on February 3.
(And with AFP)