Mohamed Abrini is one of the main defendants in the trial of the November 13 attacks – he is also known by the nickname “the man with the hat” because that is how he appeared on the CCTV of the Brussels Zaventem airport, during the attacks of March 2016. He was questioned on Tuesday March 22 on the preparations, the logistics of the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, on November 13, 2015. And he began real revelations.
>> Trial of November 13: the logbook of an ex-hostage of the Bataclan, week 21
Mohamed Abrini has been interrogated twenty times by police and investigating judges in six years. And what he says today in Paris, in the box, he never told them. First, there is this very small sentence but which says a lot: digressing while answering his lawyer, he blurts out: “Me, in fact, I was even planned for the 13th”, understand the attacks of November 13. Then he adds: “I’ll talk about it next week.” It is indeed next week that the defendants will begin to answer the court’s questions on the heart of the case, no longer on the preparations but on the evening of November 13, 2015.
Abrini comes in a second to confide that in fact, contrary to what he has always said, he was well planned in the manpower of the commandos of the attacks of Paris and Saint-Denis. We knew that on November 12, 2015, very late the day before the attacks, he had left Île-de-France where he had just arrived with all the others to return to Brussels. And that was a bit of a puzzle. “Here, we are advancing a little, we are advancing a lot even”, welcomes Maitre Marie Violleau, her lawyer.
It remains to be seen why, how Abrini therefore defected and renounced being the eleventh man, the eleventh terrorist of November 13. “We expect a lot from next week, Mr. Abrini, don’t change your state of mind” commented President Jean-Louis Periès.
Mohamed Abrini had already surprised the court a little earlier in the afternoon by evoking a one-on-one meeting, at the end of the summer of 2015, with Abdelhamid Abaoud. And that is not nothing. ATbdelhamid abaoud is the coordinator of the attacks of Paris, leader of the commando of the terraces, died then in the attack of Saint-Denis. He is also this executive of the Islamic State group that we saw in Syria dragging corpses with his pick-up on a video that has become sadly famous.
“This meeting, remembers Mohammad Abrini, it was in Charleroi”. In Belgium, therefore, in a hideout, while Abaoud was illegal, wanted by all the police who still thought he was in Syria. “A whole day spent together, says the defendant. I went to see him because he is my childhood friend, also the one who buried my little brother in Syria. I knew he was there… I told myself that it was to go all the way, that it felt like the end. Obliged, I wanted to see it, it is normal. But don’t go making movies.” And what did you two talk about? rebounds the Advocate General, necessarily curious. The person responds: “I don’t know anymore. About everything. About nothing. About the family, the neighborhood, a lot of things… I remember that he still had a wound on his shoulder and that he had traces of wounds by bullets in the legs.” Maître Gérard Chemla, civil party lawyer, revives him and insists: “But you spoke of Syria and its project in Paris? of the attacks to come?” “No, he never talks to me about what’s going to happen in Paris, Abrini replies. It was not the subject, I tell you, you have a hard head! If you don’t like my answers, I can’t help it.”
While the trial will soon enter the heart of the case, Mohamed Abrini reveals himself, does not deny his involvement… but lets go of what he wants to let go when it suits him, and still retains a part of mystery.