The Paris Special Assize Court looked for two days into the personality of the only man tried during this trial. He is suspected of complicity with the terrorist Larossi Abballa, killed by the Raid on the evening of the events.
He answered questions for more than four hours, without wavering. Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, tried before the Paris Special Assize Court for complicity in the assassination, in June 2016, of the police couple Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jessica Schneider, in front of their 3-year-old son, in Magnanville ( Yvelines), complied with pugnacity in the exercise of personality interrogation, Tuesday September 26. The accused had set the tone the day before, declaring that he hoped “to be listened to” during his trial. Since his indictment in this case, he has maintained his innocence and denied having provided assistance to the terrorist Larossi Abballa, killed in the Raid assault.
If the interrogation did not (yet) relate to the facts, the questions from the magistrates and lawyers slalomed between the“religious commitment” of the accused and his links with the jihadist ideology of the terrorist organization Islamic State. In addition to being suspected of having been present on the day of the attack in the police pavilion, based on a DNA trace, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz is considered by the prosecution to be the terrorist’s mentor.
Behind his thick black glasses, taking a sip of water from time to time, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz responded point by point, sometimes taking side roads to justify his vision of Islam and France.
An older brother “authority figure”
Asked to describe themselves in “some words” by the president, the thirty-year-old with long brown hair tied in a ponytail and a beard without a mustache, paints a somewhat smooth portrait: “I am the penultimate of five children. My childhood was not the best, but not the worst either. I had some difficulties at school.”
“As for my personality, I consider myself today as someone more calm, thoughtful. I try to approach things with a certain optimism, to see my mistakes.”
Mohamed Lamine Aberouzbefore the special assize court of Paris
Echoing the description of the personality investigator the day before, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz tell the “economic difficulties” of the family, between a father “three-eight” and a mother who “was doing housework”. His parents, “illiterate”, entrust the management of the school to the elders. The cadet says he suffered from his “timidity” and “mockery” linked to his myopia, which prevented him from seeing clearly in class. THE “prolonged absences” of the father in Morocco, upon his retirement, lead to the separation of the parental couple.
From middle school onwards, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz’s grades plummeted and his behavior changed. “Disruptive, insolent, brawler”, lists the personality investigator on the stand. The interested party responds “period of teenage rebellion”and confides that he was hiding “the words in the correspondence book” to avoid a scolding from big brother, Charaf Din Aberouz. The latter, who will be sentenced in 2013 during the trial of a network sending jihadists to Pakistan and who benefited from a dismissal of the case of the Magnanville attack, made “authority figure, (…) especially regarding school and religion”according to the investigator.
A stay in a Koranic school in Mauritania
If the testimonies of teachers collected show a “strong influence of religion” about the family, depicting a father who refused to shake women’s hands, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz nuance: “It was a mixture of customs and Islam. (…) We were taught the prohibitions, no stealing, no smoking, but our hearts were not in it.” While he says he has “stopped praying” after his 10th birthday, the accused returned to religion after his exclusion from vocational high school for a fight. “I started going to the mosque. I noticed peace and tranquility”he explains, one arm resting on the window of the box.
Failing, he says, to find a company for a work-study electrotechnical baccalaureate, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz flew to Mauritania at the end of 2010, at the age of 17. He is welcomed by an aunt and an uncle, and joins a Koranic school “in the desert, Bedouin atmosphere with camels and cows. When I was there, I had the impression of living again”. His return, in mid-2011, was precipitated by the arrest of his older brother, who had returned from Pakistan: “My mother got scared.” Assuring not to have had “finances” to return to Mauritania, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz resumes his studies and continues to assiduously attend the mosques of Mureaux (Yvelines). The imams will say of him that he “tendency to lecture everyone”. “I see what you’re referring to, but I disagree.”the accused retorted to the president, displaying his perfect mastery of the case, after six years spent consulting him in the isolation of his cell.
“Does it seem possible to you to be Muslim in France?”, attacks the magistrate. The accused gets away with a sophism: “Yes, you can be Muslim in France, because I am in France and I am Muslim.” Then, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz develops his thoughts, not without arrogance:
“The fact that France is not compatible, from my point of view, with my religion is not a surprise. The prophet was not born in Finistère.”
Mohamed Lamine Aberouzbefore the special assize court of Paris
The accused wants to “honest” : the project of living “in an Islamic country” never left him. For him, Islam is not “not compatible” with democracy, because “the Muslim must not go beyond what Islam legislates”. This Franco-Moroccan considers himself above all as “a Muslim of Arab origin”. “There are no French republican values that speak to you?”, insists the general advocate. By searching carefully, Mohamed Lamine Aberouz quoted “freedom of speech”. “But there is theory and practice. People constantly criticize me for my freedom of belief”, he objects. However, he denies having wanted to one day join the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria: “It’s a war state, it’s not a quiet life, you can die at any time.”
Eventful hearing for his religious wife
Therefore Mohamed Lamine Aberouzwhich seems to have the answer to everything, justifies a report from the prison administration pointing out the fact “that he would not adhere to a deradicalization process”. “This is about the fight against violent radicalization. However, I contest the facts with which I am accused and I do not intend to commit any action”he insists.
How can we explain, then, that his heart only beats for women convicted of planned attacks? The day before, the court heard Sarah Hervouët and Janna C. The first, ex-promote of Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, received twenty years of imprisonment in the case of the failed attack on gas cylinders at Notre-Dame de Paris . The second was sentenced in 2020 to seven years in prison for a planned attack and got married religiously, from her cell, with Mohamed Lamine Aberouz in June 2021. They saw each other for the first time in the courtroom on Monday. The Assize Court witnessed, stunned, the big smile of the accused discovering his wife dressed in a duck blue jilbeb.
The eventful hearing of this 25-year-old woman proved to be a test for the defense from the first day of the trial. Refusing to take the oath and answer most of the president’s questions, the young woman, released from prison ten days ago, also believes that “the values of the Republic do not agree” with her family and wishes to make her hijra, that is to say, to leave France for a country where she would feel freer to live her religion. The general prosecutor’s office, which summoned this witness, did not fail to read extracts from the mail exchanged between the lovers, in which Mohamed Lamine Aberouz accused him of reading “novels” and no “religious documentation”. Asked about his “evolution” since their meeting, Janna C. says: “I know that in my religion, I am a woman, and therefore I do not have to fight.”
“She has fairly binary reasoning, but you saw her yesterday, I can’t impose anything on her. She has a much stronger character than me”, tried to catch up with Mohamed Lamine Aberouz on Tuesday. Before she left the courtroom on Monday evening, he asked her, visibly moved: “Can I count on your support until the end?” “Yes”had whispered Janna C., before leaving.