Farid Khelil, 36, is the first accused to explain himself before the special assize court in Paris, Monday, February 14, on the first day of the trial for the attack on the church of Saint-Etienne du Rouvray. He is the cousin of one of the two assassins of Father Jacques Hamel, killed during the attack on July 26, 2016 and his interrogation begins with an error. “Do you recognize the facts?”asks the president. “Yes, the association”explains Farid Khelil, before resuming “Oh no”. He thus rejects the charge of criminal terrorist association which targets him and two other defendants. The criminal dimension makes them incur thirty years of imprisonment. The fourth accused, indicted for complicity, will be tried in his absence.
>> Assassination of Father Hamel in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray: “I did not want to move so that they did not come to finish me”, testifies a survivor of the attack
Farid Khelil then tells his story. A student who was not very diligent in school, he assures us that if he had worked more and with more concentration, he would have done better. Then he talks about his children, his teenage daughter whom he had when he was 20 and who is 16 today. “Now don’t you see her?”asks the president of the court. “No, but I’m taking it pretty well”, he replies. The accused then explains that his hobbies are smoking cannabis and playing video games.
The course of Rachid Kassim, tried for complicity was also mentioned. This Frenchman, considered to be the instigator of Father Hamel’s attack, is the notable absentee from this trial. He gave instructions from the Syrian Iraqi zone. Left to join the ranks of the Islamic State organization, he is presumed dead in 2017. His name appears in several terrorism files, in France in particular. Summoned to the trial in the coming weeks to testify, Rachid Kassim’s mother will not come either. In a long letter sent to the president, she explains how broken she is, the nightmare that keeps starting again. She has the impression of drowning at each judicial summons.
It is a trial, where the question of possible flaws in the intelligence also arises. Because one of the attackers, Adel Kermich had a Telegram channel while he was under intelligence surveillance. He called there, a few days before the attack in the church, to commit attacks on French soil, violent actions. He quoted churches, schools and spoke of “cut off heads”, what he was going to do a few days later. Did these messages pass under the radar of the intelligence services? This is what lawyers want to know, especially civil parties.
Master Christian Saint-Palais, who defends relatives of Father Hamel, asked that the five officers in charge of the investigation be heard. But they will not come a priori, medical certificates in support. The lawyer does not understand this absence: “A trial is used to find out how the investigation went and possibly, it also serves to reveal the shortcomings of our arsenal. A trial allows for adversarial debate. It is not a question of questioning the responsibility of one or the other. We are in a different trial than that of the search for the responsibility of the police. I hope we will have more sincere explanations shortly and I hope we will have them here in the debate since they are called as witnesses.”
Defense lawyers also want these officers to come and explain themselves. Note that Roseline Hamel, 80, sister of the priest murdered in 2016, left in the afternoon before the end of the hearings. Too tired, she had reached her limit.