This Friday, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz was questioned on the merits of the case. With confidence and precision, he denied any involvement in the attack of June 13, 2016. The only person tried, he is suspected of complicity in the assassination of a police officer, Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, and his partner, Jessica Schneider.
“I have no responsibility for Larossi’s actions [Abballa]. I stand by my statement”, firmly declares Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, the only accused in the Magnanville attack trial, at the opening of his interrogation. Friday October 6, the president of the special assize court of Paris begins by recalling the charges against him: “complicity in the assassination of a person holding public authority”, “criminal terrorist association” and “complicity of sequestration in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.
Investigators not only suspect him of having been aware of what his childhood friend Larossi Abballa, the man who stabbed policeman Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his partner Jessica Schneider, was planning in front of their son. 3 years old. They also suspect him of having helped them in this enterprise, since the accused’s DNA was found on the victims’ laptop.
Since his indictment, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, who faces life imprisonment, has maintained his innocence. The attacker, killed by the Raid on the evening of the double assassination, “is no longer in this world, we are looking for a culprit at all costs”, he denounces in his cubicle on Friday. “He is deceased, he cannot answer for his actions, and they want me to answer for his actions today”, continues this 30-year-old Franco-Moroccan, who knows the case perfectly. Questioned for nine hours, the accused responded with great precision, determined to demonstrate that he knew nothing of Larossi Abballa’s plans and that he was not present at the scene of the tragedy.
“No one will escape divine justice”
Mohamed Lamine Aberouz was only suspected late. The day after the events, investigators first focused on his younger brother, Charaf Din Aberouz, as well as one of the latter’s friends, Saad Rajraji. They suspected them of having provided logistical assistance to the attacker and were indicted, before benefiting from a dismissal of the charges. “From the start, we looked in the surroundings [de Larossi Abballa], my brother made the ideal culprit, they loaded him, they loaded him, they loaded him and they unloaded on me”, deplores the accused.
But very quickly, he comes out of this victimizing posture and responds point by point, on the merits of the case. The president first questions him about his relationship to the jihadist ideology of the terrorist organization Islamic State. “I have never legitimized anything on the basis of religious texts, such as an attack or a violent act”assures the person concerned, before adding, answering another question: “If you ask me if I approve of their methods, the answer is no. They will have to answer for it before God, no one will escape divine justice, and them first.”.
Very comfortable, this fervent believer, who spent a stay in a Koranic school in Mauritania in 2010, does not hesitate to deliver, on several occasions, his geopolitical analysis, concerning Syria, Mali or Iraq. “When I take stock of these last years, all Western interventions have been a catastrophe (…) from my point of view, it has only brought disorder, nothing but chaos,” details the one who defines himself as a “observer” conflicts. Numerous audio recordings will in fact be found by investigators, in which he analyzes the news of the time.
A Telegram account deleted immediately after the attack
But what did he know of his friend’s intentions? Upon his release from prison in September 2013, after a conviction for participation in a jihadist network between France and Pakistan, Larossi Abballa never returned “on the details of his affair”says the accused. “He pledged never again to do anything that would harm his family, and he held his ground for three years, hence my surprise and astonishment at his action”confides Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, recalling that Larossi Abballa had marriage plans and that his sandwich delivery business seemed to suit him.
However, he notes that the attacker “never digested the detention, which caused him a lot of problems, particularly psychological”. “But, he never confided to me any intention of taking action. Our relations would have ended immediately because I know very well that behind it, there are only problems.”he assures.
Little by little, the president moves towards the evening of the tragedy. Why did Mohamed Lamine Aberouz delete his Telegram account in the hours following the attack? The accused claims to have panicked when he discovered his friend’s face in the protest video he posted on social media. “I’m in the total astonishment (…) because of the links I had with him, I said to myself: ‘I’m going to have repercussions, you’re going to be blamed for anything and everything’ and I had a bad reflex out of fear, I deleted my account”he describes.
A self-confident accused
And why, if he has nothing to reproach himself for, did he leave with a relative, a few days after the attack, a tablet, his computer, that of his brother, USB keys and his wife’s passports? family ? “Did you fear a search and that jihadist documentation would be found?”, asks the president. The accused strongly refutes this. “I didn’t want my property to be seized”he maintains. “If there had been a criminal use [de ces objets], I would have just destroyed these elements”he says with confidence.
The crux of the trial arrives: the question of his DNA, found on the wrist rest of the police couple’s computer, striking proof according to the prosecution that Mohamed Lamine Aberouz was with Larossi Abballa on the evening of the double assassination, and that He managed to escape before the attack by the police. It was this genetic fingerprint that turned the investigation upside down, when it was cross-referenced in the National Automated Genetic Fingerprint File (Fnaeg) as being his, on August 30, 2017, more than a year after the events.
The police officer who took him into custody in December of that same year was surprised that he did not demonstrate “no surprise, no despondency when we tell him that we found his DNA at the crime scene”, notes the president. The accused immediately put forward the hypothesis of a transfer of his DNA, deposited by Larossi Abballa, whom he was used to meeting. He recounts this custody in detail and claims to have suffered “crazy pressure”. “There were three to yell at me vehemently to extract false confessions and told me over and over again: ‘There’s your DNA, you were there, there’s your DNA!’ he says, standing in his box. “I reiterated: I never participated in this attack, and if DNA was found there, it is because of the author and the fact that I frequented him”.
The DNA question still unanswered
The president is surprised that he immediately gave this rational explanation and asks him if his brother would not have provided him with information, which the latter would have obtained during his various interrogations, as part of his indictment. “He only spoke to me about the incriminating elements concerning him, he never spoke to me about DNA”answers Mohamed Lamine Aberouz.
The possibility of DNA transfer is the keystone of the defense. Two experts were called to the stand in the last week of September to find out if this trace indeed proves that the accused touched the couple’s computer. But no clear answer was reached, with one of them even assuring: “We will never be able to definitively conclude” whether there was a transfer or not.
Mohamed Lamine Aberouz knows that he is in a position of strength on this subject and that the accusation which is based on this so-called “queen of evidence” emerged weakened from this hearing. He, who knows his file by heart, reiterates how much he regrets that the bottom of the glove worn by Larossi Abballa on June 13, 2016, was not examined, despite two requests from the defense. She believes that this accessory could have been the vector for the transfer of the accused’s DNA. “Today, your jurisdiction will have to rule on this glaring gap,” he says, with the same confidence that guided this entire interrogation.