Just ten years after the first hostage-takings carried out in Syria against Western journalists and humanitarians, the Parisian investigating judge of the anti-terrorism unit in charge of the case pronounced this Wednesday the dismissal of five men before a court. of assizes specially composed for the detention, the kidnapping of hostages in an organized gang, in relation to a terrorist enterprise. The period used is from April 12, 2013 to January 14, 2014.
The defendants of the upcoming trial are five in number, the first of which is Mehdi Nemmouche, the author of the attack against the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014. Salim Benghalem, Abdelmalek Tanem, Kais al-Abdallah and Oussama Atar are also prosecuted.
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On the other hand, investigations will continue against a jihadist who had been indicted during the investigation and against other French jihadists. Future investigations, in conjunction with the European and American authorities – in addition to those, already considerable, carried out by French anti-terrorism – could therefore bring new elements in the coming months to shed light on the prison and torture system put in place. place by the Islamic State.
Mehdi Nemmouche, 37, nicknamed “Abou Omar”, has already been sentenced in Belgium to life imprisonment for the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels. He is currently detained in France. The Frenchman Abdelmalek Tanem, 33, already convicted for having joined Syria in 2012, is suspected of having been one of the jailers of the hostages, which he denies. He too will appear at the public hearing, probably in early 2024.
Two key men are also returned to the assizes despite the virtual certainty of their death in a war zone. This is the“emir of the jailers”the Belgian Oussama Atar, head of external operations of the Islamic State who would later become the ” brain “ the attacks of 13 November 2015 in Paris and the “Chief of Detention”, the French Selim Benghalem, born in Bourg-la-Reine, radicalized in prison, close to the Kouchi brothers and Peter Chérif, left for Syria in 2013. Benghalem is considered to have died since a coalition drone attack in 2017 without the slightest assurance of his death could today cause the justice to pronounce the extinction of the proceedings. Atar. who most likely perished in a coalition drone attack in November 2017.
The civil parties are the four French journalists Didier François, Edouard Elias, Nicolas Hénin, Pierre Torrès but also the Italian Frédérico Motka, the Spaniard Marcos Marginedas and the family of the British David Haines, executed by the terrorists. In less than two years, 25 European and North American hostages had been kidnapped in northern Syria.
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Throughout the French investigation and during most of his trial in Brussels for the attack on the Jewish museum, Mehdi Nemmouche maintained this line of conduct: silence and denial. During the upcoming trial, he will have to face those who, doing their jobs in Syria, have been taken hostage.
Reacting to the Obs on this dismissal decision, Pascal Garbarini, lawyer for Edouard Elias, photographer taken hostage for fourteen months, underlined “his great satisfaction that the judicial investigation has been completed with indisputable evidence against the defendants”. “The trial has its virtues,” he added. There will be pain but also anger”.
The defense of the accused has not yet reacted to this decision.
