The trial of Mehdi Nemmouche, already sentenced to life for the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, and four other jihadists opens this Monday in Paris. They are accused of having detained French journalists in Syria.
This Monday, February 17, 2025, opens before the Special Assize Court of Paris the trial of five jihadists for “forcible confinement, acts of torture and barbarism in organized gang and in relation to a terrorist enterprise” perpetrated on seven Wests, whose Four French journalists between 2013 and 2014. Of the five accused, two were presumed to be dead in Syria and will be tried in absentia.
The other three will be present in perpetuity, of which Mehdi Nemmouche, already sentenced to maximum trouble in 2019 for the attack on the Jewish Museum of Brussels committed in 2014 which had left four dead.The hearings of the civil parties are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, interrogations will start the week after with that of Mehdi Nemmouche. The trial is scheduled until March 21
“Four days and four nights without drinking or eating”
The five men judged from this Monday are accused of having detained French journalists under the Islamic State (IS) in Syria in 2013. As a reminder, journalists Didier François and Edouard Elias, then Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres, had been kidnapped ten days apart in June 2013, in the Aleppo region for the first two cities and Raqqa for the following.
Released on April 18, 2014, they had testified to the unbearable physical violence suffered, as well as psychological ramps, deprivation of food and simulacres of executions.“They take away our glasses, our belts and our shoes and take us handcuffed to a van to the first place of detention,” says Didier François to Bfmtv. After spending “four days and four nights without drinking or eating”, he said he had to drink “toilet water”. He had lost 30 kilos during his captivity.
“He knows that he will never come out of prison”
On May 24, 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche had killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. Once his photo was published in the press, several ex-hostages in Syria immediately recognized it, he is suspected of having been “Abu Omar”, one of their jailers in Syria.Hearing his voice, they are even sure “100 %”. Today 39, “he knows that he will never leave prison,” said his lawyer Me Francis Vuilemin.
On the other hand, he will express himself to challenge having held “the role of jailer that is lent to him”, he continues at the microphone of TF1/LCI. During the investigation, Mehdi Nemmouche was described as a “pervert”, a delinquent converted into the “religious ethnic cleaning”, and admiring Mohamed Merah –Jewish children’s killer in a school in Toulouse in 2012 – as he had indicated.“He told me that he was going into Iraqi or Syrian families, violated the woman, killed the children, slaughtered the man, then used their fridge,” said Didier François about him.
Mehdi Nemmouche is not the only jihadist judged from Monday, February 17. The files of two other Islamic State executives (alleged dead) will also be studied, in the same way as Abdelmalek Tanem (35 years old), suspected of having been one of the jailers, and the Syrian Kais Al Abdallah (41 years old) , which was according to the investigation the facilitator of the kidnapping of Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres.
For his part, the former journalist and hostage in Syria Nicolas Hénin said on France Inter Wanting to “make” the jihadists “understand that they have lost”. “What the terrorists want is that we are collectively afraid, what the terrorists would love is that I disembark on the antenna of France Inter and that I come to tell by detail their sadism, so as to What each of your listeners is frozen with dread (…) I will fight, including in court, to make them understand that they have lost, “he assured before the trial.