The floor is still with the defense in the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015. This Friday, to close this first week of pleadings, it was the lawyers of Ali El Haddad Asufi who had the floor. The national anti-terrorist prosecution has requested a severe sentence of 16 years in prison against this man suspected of having sought to provide weapons to the terrorist cell, which he has always disputed.
With our special correspondent at the Paris courthouse, Nathanael Vittrant
Me Jonathan de Taye is responsible for defusing the cornerstone of the accusation: a trip to Rotterdam. “ A very bad station novel “, denounces the Belgian lawyer who revels in the criminal record of the man whom Ali el Haddad is suspected of having met, whom the Dutch police had presented ” as an international arms dealer “. A man arrested in September 2014 for… stealing a bicycle. “ I imagine him on his bike, his bag full of Kalashnikovs jokes the lawyer before closing this chapter: a drug trafficker, goes to a country where drugs are sold to meet drug traffickers. When I hear hoofbeats at my window, I think of a horse and not a zebra because we are not in the bush. The Public Prosecutor’s Office sees zebras everywhere. »
” You will not go down in history with a capital H »
Ali El Haddad Asufi is also accused of the significant help given to his best friend, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, central piece of the terrorist cell. “ The Public Prosecutor’s Office offers you a single reading key for all the accused: it is the ideological commitment », Asserts Me Martin Mechin. “ Me, I’m not going to offer you a master key, but a key that is only used by my client. : the crime of harboring a criminal “. Because according to his defense, Ali El Haddad Asufi was unaware of all of his friend’s disastrous projects and he above all sought to help the gangster he thought was on the run, and not the terrorist he did not suspect existed. ” At the end of your verdict, you will not go down in history with a capital H “, concludes the lawyer. “ You will have to judge the story of Ali El Haddad Asufi with a tiny h. And I hope we have lived up to it. »
►Also read: At the November 13 trial, Farid Kharkhach’s lawyers demand his release