Christian Ganczarski sentenced to 20 years in prison for attacking prison guards

The special assize court of Paris retained the terrorist character of his act. The German jihadist Christian Ganczarski was sentenced, Friday, June 16, in Paris, to twenty years of criminal imprisonment for the violent attack of supervisors in 2018, while he was detained in the prison of Vendin-le-Vieil (Pas-de -Calais). He had “bounce” on four guards who came to fetch him from his cell in the isolation ward of the ultra-secure prison, beating them with a canteen knife and a pair of solidified scissors, and to the cries of“‘God is great'”.

In the box, the 56-year-old accused, with a full black beard and the beginning of baldness, listened carefully to the decision of the special assize court, translated by an interpreter, without showing the slightest reaction. Before the professional magistrates retired to deliberate, Christian Ganczarski had once again presented his “apologies” to the four guards he had violently attacked on January 11, 2018.

A permanent ban from French territory

“I know it’s not enough, but it’s all I can do,” he had launched to the supervisors, civil parties. His lawyers, Sébastien Bono and Romain Boulet, had called on the court to show “discernment”, by discarding the terrorist qualification, as well as premeditation and a “willingness to kill”.

After more than three hours of deliberation, the court followed the reasoning of the public prosecutor on the terrorist and premeditated nature of the attack, but went well beyond the twelve years in prison required against the former “senior executive” of ‘Al-Qaeda, claimed by the United States. It did not add a security period to this sentence, but pronounced a permanent ban on French territory for Christian Ganczarski. “Even if Christian Ganczarski has always claimed to have lost control of his actions, there is no evidence to support this explanation”, explained the president of the court, Christophe Petiteau.