Appeal in Paris | Life imprisonment required for jihadist tried for murder

(Paris) The maximum sentence, namely life imprisonment, was required Monday against Algerian student Sid-Ahmed Ghlam on appeal for the murder of a young woman and an abortive attack on a church in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne) in April 2015.

The advocates general wanted this sentence to be accompanied by a security sentence of 22 years and a definitive ban from French territory at the end of his sentence.

At first instance, Sid-Ahmed Ghlam was sentenced to exactly this sentence.

Sid-Ahmed Ghlam is a “man of extraordinary danger” who has a “misguided and paranoid” vision of his religion, put forward the advocates general.

“Its objective was to sow terror,” they argued. During his appeal trial, Ghlam “persevered in his lies in a perverse way.” “There is nothing to be expected from him,” added Pnat representatives. “He did not have the courage to take responsibility for his actions,” they lamented.

On several occasions, they opposed the attitude of Sid-Ahmed Ghlam to that of the daughter of the victim, aged 4 at the time of the facts.

In a letter read at the bar by her father, the young J., now aged 11, wrote that one must “take responsibility for one’s choices”.

Sid-Ahmed Ghlam is unable to do so, the advocates general said in substance. “The lie is part of its operation,” they asserted.

Contrary to his trial at first instance, Sid-Ahmed Ghlam admitted to having traveled to Syria to meet with Islamic State officials and admitted that he had intended to kill parishioners in a church in Villejuif. before giving up his project.

“But these confessions are not. We were already convinced “that the accused had traveled to Syria and wanted to carry out a deadly attack on a church, the attorneys general said.

“Filthy denials”

In the first instance, Ghlam admitted to having met some executives of the Islamic State but in Turkey and he maintained that it was just a question of “scaring” parishioners.

On appeal, he persisted in denying being the author of the assassination of Aurélie Chatelain, coldly shot in a parking lot in Villejuif in order to steal her car.

As in the first instance, Sid-Ahmed Ghlam maintained that a mysterious accomplice, of which the investigators did not find any trace, had killed the young mother aged 32.

Only the blood and DNA of Sid-Ahmed Ghlam were found at the crime scene, the attorneys general recalled.

After the assassination, Mr. Ghlam accidentally injured his thigh while putting his gun back on his belt. This injury forced him to give up his plan to attack.

Sid-Ahmed Ghlam, 30, remained headlong most of the time during the indictment.

“You are the only one who can rehabilitate yourself” had urged him, in vain, before the requisitions, the lawyer of the Chatelain family, Mr.^e Charles Merlen.

M^e Antoine Casubolo-Ferro, another lawyer from the Chatelain family, denounced for his part the “filthy and scandalous denials” of the accused. “Why did Sid-Ahmed Ghlam not confess” to the murder of Aurélie Chatelain during this trial? Asked the lawyer. “It is because in truth he never came out of the ideology” of the Islamic State, replied the lawyer.

“You are going to be condemned not because you are a Muslim. You are going to be condemned because you are an assassin ”, insisted on Me Gérard Chemla, last lawyer of the civil parties.

The two attorneys general of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) also requested sentences of 15, 25 and 30 years in prison against the three main co-defendants of Sid-Ahmed Ghlam.

Among these co-accused is Rabah Boukaouma, considered by the prosecution as the “chief logistician” of the operation who, at first instance, was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, including a two-thirds security period.

If the advocates general confirmed in their requisition requesting a safety period of two-thirds for Farid Brahami sentenced to 25 years in prison at first instance, they did not wish on the other hand to set a safety period for Abdelkader Jalal, sentenced to 15 years in prison at first instance with a two-thirds security sentence.

A repeat offender by his own admission, Mr. Jalal has repeatedly claimed that he was “not a terrorist”.

In prison since April 2015, he greeted the requisitions with relief, smiling with his lawyers.

The defense will begin its oral arguments on Tuesday. The verdict is expected Thursday or Friday.