Jihadist Peter Cherif sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the January 2015 attacks

Prosecuted for criminal terrorist association, the jihadist was accused of having played a role with Chérif Kouachi, one of the two “Charlie Hebdo” terrorists, and in the sequestration, in 2011, of three French nationals in Yemen.

Peter Cherif was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a security period of 22 yearsThursday October 3, by the special assize court of Paris. He was found guilty of criminal terrorist conspiracy. The 42-year-old jihadist had been on trial since September 16, notably for the role he may have played in Yemen with Chérif Kouachi, one of the newspaper’s attackers. Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. The court followed the requisitions of the two advocates general.

Peter Cherif had joined the ranks of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqpa) in Yemen, where he stayed between 2011 and 2018. He was accused of having participated in the training of his childhood friend Chérif Kouachi for attack committed on January 7, 2015 in the premises of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdoin which 12 people were murdered. He also appeared for the organized gang sequestration in 2011, for more than five months, of three French nationals, members of the NGO Triangle Generation Humanitarian.

During his trial, the accused most of the time refused to answer questions and denied the facts with which he was accused concerning the attack against Charlie Hebdo. “What he is ready to take on is a completely disembodied story”but to factual questions, “it closes” And “as soon as we talk about the 2015 attacks, he flees”scathed Attorney General Benjamin Chambre during his indictment. Peter Cherif, however, admitted to having been one of the jailers of the three humanitarian workers and to having served as “translator” to interface between the hostages and their Yemeni Al-Qaeda captors.

Also known under the pseudonym Abou Hamza, Peter Cherif is a figure in international jihadism. In 2011, in Yemen, he “was the only French member of AQPA”recalled the two representatives of the public prosecutor, painting the portrait of a “integral jihadist”. From the different roles he took on for seven years within Aqpa to a driving course carried out in a driving school in Dammartin-en-Goële (Seine-et-Marne), “500 meters away” from the printing house where the Kouachi brothers had taken refuge on the run, Peter Cherif was presented as “the cornerstone of preparation” of the attack of Charlie Hebdo.

By his position within Aqpa, the judges considered that he had “facilitates integration” by Chérif Kouachi by introducing him to Anwar al-Awlaqi, a radical American-Yemeni preacher, senior official of the terrorist organization, killed by drone in September 2011. But his complicity in these January 2015 attacks could not be demonstrated.

“I feel like I took part in a fixed match”denounced Thursday morning one of Peter Cherif’s lawyers, Nabil El Ouchikli. According to him, “the purpose” of the public prosecutor’s office was “to eliminate Peter Cherif”. His colleague, Sefen Guez Guez, for his part castigated the elements on which the public prosecutor relied to demonstrate the guilt of the jihadist, in particular declassified notes and statements from an arms trafficker. Invited, after the defense pleadings, to speak in order to address his last words to the court, Peter Cherif declared that he had not “nothing to add”.