First 2015 Paris attacks trial begins
January 24, 2018
A Paris court on Wednesday began the trial of 31-year-old French citizen Jawad Bendaoud, to determine if he actively conspired in helping two of the jihadists involved in the November 2015 Paris terror attacks hide out or whether he was unknowlingly caught up in events.
Bendaoud is on trial alongside his friend Mohamed Soumah and Youssef Aitboulahcen, the brother of the woman killed in a police raid on his apartment.
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Anti-terror police killed Hasna Aitboulahcen in an assault on the apartment on November 18 last year, five days after the attacks.
Bendaoud—a native of the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis with a long criminal record—is accused of lending his apartment to a senior "Islamic State" (IS) jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is suspected of coordinating the attacks that killed 130 people, and his accomplice Chakib Akrouh. The attacks were the deadliest in France since WWII.
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Ten heavily armed jihadists attacked the national stadium in Paris, bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert venue on the night of November 13, 2015 in attacks claimed by IS.
Protests on Wednesday morning by guards at the Fresnes prison near Paris where Bendaoud was being held saw some staff refuse to let him out before riot police were brought in to clear a way through the picket of about a hundred guards, who were protesting pay and security at French jails.
Bendaoud pleads ignorance
"I didn't know they were terrorists," Bendaoud said in a television interview in 2017. "Someone asked me for a favor, I helped them out," he said, adding that all he knew was that they were from Belgium and wanted access to water and a place to pray.
"If I'd known, do you really think I would have hosted them?" Bendaoud said. A huge manhunt for the men had been launched at the time.
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His own lawyer Xavier Nogueras described him as "the one we laughed about, having cried so much."
He was previously sentenced to eight years in jail for killing a man in a fight over a mobile phone, and was released in 2013.
More trials to come
The trial will be followed by that of the only survivor among the 10 men who carried out the attack. Salah Abdeslam is due to appear in court in Belgium on February 5.
Abdeslam was arrested in Belgium four months after the attacks and transferred to France, where he has since refused to cooperate with investigators.
Around 15 people are in custody or being sought by police as part of the French probe into the Paris attacks which has taken investigators to Belgium, Morocco and Turkey.
jbh/law (AFP, AP)