This is a third trial that is opening for the January 2015 attacks. Nearly ten years after the 17 assassinations perpetrated by the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly at the editorial office of Charlie Hebdoin Montrouge and at the Hyper Cacher, a new defendant appears before the courts. Jihadist Peter Cherif, 42, is being tried from Monday, September 16 before the special assize court in Paris. Sent back for criminal terrorist association, he is suspected in particular of having played a role alongside Chérif Kouachi from Yemen, where he worked for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) between 2011 and 2018.
Arrested in December 2018 in Djibouti, Peter Cherif was the missing piece of the first trial, which ended with the convictions of the 11 defendants present, including Ali Riza Polat, sent back for complicity in terrorist crimes – the latter was sentenced to thirty years in prison on appeal. Peter Cherif, then under investigation and in pretrial detention, had nevertheless been heard as a witness by videoconference from Fresnes prison. After reciting a verse from the Koran and making religious statements, he refused to answer the court’s questions, assuring that he had not “nothing to do with it” with these attacks.
“I was forced to come here for a matter I have nothing to do with, I will not answer any questions.”
Peter Cherif, witnessduring the first trial of the January 2015 attacks
Will he be more inclined to speak at his own trial? “We don’t know”notes a judicial source to franceinfo. During his arrest in 2018, Peter Cherif said to himself “in a dynamic of total cooperation to provide elements that can save human lives”. But in their referral order, the anti-terrorism investigating judges note that he has since largely exercised his right to silence during his interrogations and “did not give any information” on Aqpa. He also denies having participated in the six-month kidnapping, starting in May 2011 in Yemen, of three French members of the NGO Triangle Génération Humainitaire. The latter described a jailer who spoke French and whose physical characteristics could correspond to Peter Cherif. He will also be tried for these facts.
Charlie Hebdo: Will Peter Cherif, one of the last witnesses to the preparation of the attack, reveal his secrets?
While he faces a life sentence for his alleged involvement in the attack that decimated the editorial staff of “Charlie Hebdo” in 2015, French jihadist Peter Cherif is striving to deny his involvement. For experts, his background contradicts this.
(France 2)
Also known under the pseudonym Abou Hamza, Peter Cherif is a figure of international jihadism. He appeared in the early 2000s in the directory of terrorists wanted by the Americans, who arrested him in 2004 while he was fighting in Fallujah, Iraq. This country sentenced him two years later to fifteen years in prison, but Peter Cherif escaped in 2007 to Syria. He was expelled in early 2008 and transferred to France.
Even if the accused does not provide his own answers, “This trial is of interest because Peter Cherif is an interesting character, he is a precursor of French jihadism”estimates Antoine Casubolo-Ferro, lawyer for the French Association of Victims of Terrorism as well as Michel Catalano and Lilian Lepère, taken hostage by the Kouachi brothers in the printing works of Dammartin-en-Goële (Seine-et-Marne), to franceinfo. His clients have a “nascent question” : how come that at the beginning of 2011, Peter Cherif completed a driving course at a driving school in Dammartin, “500 meters away” from the printing house where the Kouachi brothers took refuge during their escape?
At that time, he appeared free in the trial of a network transporting fighters to Iraq, the so-called Buttes-Chaumont network. But just before his sentence to five years in prison, he decided to flee to Yemen, via Tunisia and Oman.
Shortly after his arrival in Yemen, Peter Cherif was visited in the summer of 2011 by two other French jihadists, Chérif Kouachi, a childhood friend, and Salim Benghalem, who died in 2017 in Syria. The judges believe that he “facilitated integration” within Aqpa of the co-author of the attack Charlie Hebdo by introducing him to Anwar al-Aulaqi, a radical Yemeni-American preacher and senior member of the terrorist organization. According to the prosecution, Peter Cherif had thus “awareness” of “the mission” to carry out an attack in France entrusted to Chérif Kouachi. The person concerned is also said to have “maintained contacts” with his friend when he returned to France, which “confirmed”for the judges, “Peter Cherif’s knowledge of the mission entrusted to him” to the youngest of the Kouachi brothers.
Peter Chérif will not, however, be tried for complicity, because “it could not be demonstrated that he directly assisted Chérif Kouachi in the commission of the attack of January 7, 2015 at Charlie Hebdo”explains a judicial source to franceinfo. But “it is at the very least established that he participated in an agreement with the latter with a view to facilitating his integration into the terrorist organization Aqpa, which would allow him to be trained, approved and given a mission for his criminal project”and that Peter Cherif, “in his capacity as responsibilities within Al-Qaeda”, “participated in the definition and dissemination of propaganda, aimed in particular Charlie Hebdo“continues the same source.
Accusations rejected by Peter Cherif. Throughout the judicial investigation, he limited himself to stating that Chérif Kouachi and Salim Benghalem had told him “that they were going to come out again” from Yemen for “a job outside”without precision. “I didn’t know. I told the police a thousand times.”he said during an interrogation in June 2021. Contacted by franceinfo, his lawyers, Ouadie Elhamamouchi and Sefen Guez Guez, did not respond.
Although the debates will not only focus on the 2015 attacks but also on his activities within AQAP and the kidnapping of the hostages, the civil parties “still waiting”ten years later, “explanations”according to Antoine Casubolo-Ferro. “In any case, justice will be done and that is necessary.”he adds. “This “The trial is important to me because it has this connection to the country of my childhood, Djibouti.”testifies for his part Sigolène Vinson, columnist at Charlie Hebdospared during the massacre in the editorial office, and who found himself “by chance” on the plane that brought Peter Cherif back to France at the end of 2018. She hopes to have answers on a more ideological level.
“In the first two trials, it was very technical, there was very little question of ideology. What is behind these attacks, that’s always what I miss, this fundamental question.”
Sigolène Vinson, columnist at “Charlie Hebdo”to franceinfo
Regarding the delay between the events and this trial, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office reminds franceinfo that five years have passed since Peter Cherif’s arrest: “He is the only Frenchman identified within Aqpa Yemen, the terrorist acts he is accused of are multiple and concern a prevention period of almost eight years, leading to lengthy investigations.”
Prison reports give insight into his demeanor at the trial. In their referral order, the judges emphasize that the sounds picked up by microphones in his cell “tend to demonstrate” that he continues to adhere to jihadist theses. Incarcerated for a time, at the end of 2020, alongside Mohamed Abrini, the “man in the hat” of the Brussels airport attack in March 2016, Peter Cherif told him that he was “the ambassador of the Prophet”. According to a prison report dated August and consulted by franceinfo, this prisoner “sleeps on the floor and refuses to use the TV” in his cell in the Toulon-La Farlède prison (Var), where he is now incarcerated. He resumed “two university courses” remotely and has refused to see his two children for several months because “according to him, the French justice system gives him a negative image that could harm their development”. Peter Cherif faces life in prison.