French jihad veteran Peter Cherif, suspected in particular of having played a role alongside Chérif Kouachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers in 2015, contested the charges against him on Monday at the opening of his trial before the special assize court in Paris.
At the end of this first day of hearing, mainly devoted to the registration of the civil parties and the presentation of the case, the president of the assize court asked the accused if he admitted the offences with which he was charged.
“No, I do not recognize the facts with which I am accused,” Peter Cherif replied soberly from the dock, dressed in a gray suit and a white shirt, and wearing a surgical mask and large glasses.
This man, now aged 42, is being tried by the specially composed assize court for criminal terrorist association between 2011 and 2018, the period of his presence in Yemen within Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
He is also appearing for the organized kidnapping in 2011, for more than five months, of three French nationals, members of the NGO Triangle Génération Humainitaire.
But it is above all his potential involvement in the massacre committed in Paris in the offices of the weekly Charlie Hebdo by Chérif and Saïd Kouachi on January 7, 2015, fiercely debated during the investigation, which should be at the heart of the trial.
The investigating judges believe that he “facilitated the integration into AQAP of one of the Kouachi brothers, most likely Chérif”, and that he had “knowledge” of “the mission” to carry out an attack in France entrusted to his childhood friend during a short stay in Yemen in the summer of 2011.
According to several witnesses, including Peter Cherif's late partner, AQAP advised foreign fighters arriving in Yemen to return to their countries of origin to commit attacks. A suggestion that was also made to Peter Cherif, who could not therefore have been unaware of it.
The person concerned is also said to have “maintained contact” with Chérif Kouachi upon his return to France.
– “Nothing to do with it” –
Before investigators, Peter Cherif denied knowing what this mission, which was allegedly entrusted to his friend, consisted of.
Heard in the fall of 2020 as a witness during the trial of the January 2015 attacks, committed in particular by the Kouachi brothers before they were shot dead by the police, and which left a total of 17 dead, he assured that he had “nothing to do” with these attacks, before remaining silent.
According to one of his lawyers, Me Sefen Guez Guez, the presence of his client at this trial “sends a message that he is there to be heard and wishes to be able to do so in calm conditions.”
The civil parties, who are very numerous in this procedure, are waiting.
“We are waiting for Peter Cherif to answer our questions in a way other than by quoting the Koran,” Richard Malka, Charlie Hebdo's lawyer, told the press before the trial began. “We are waiting to understand (…) how we get from Buttes-Chaumont to Bin Laden's,” he added.
Also known by the pseudonym Abou Hamza, Peter Cherif faces life imprisonment.
Converted to Islam in 2003, he is, like the Kouachi brothers with whom he grew up in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, one of the figures of the terrorist network known as Buttes-Chaumont (a Parisian district).
In 2004, he left to fight in Iraq and was captured a few months later by the Americans in the ruins of Fallujah.
There, he was sentenced in 2006 to 15 years in prison, but he escaped in 2007 to Syria. He ended up presenting himself at the French embassy in Damascus and was expelled in early 2008, then indicted in Paris.
He was tried in early 2011 but fled, just before his five-year prison sentence, to Yemen, via Tunisia and Oman.
He spent seven years there, before going to Djibouti in 2018 under a false identity, with his wife – who has since died – and his two children, and being arrested there three months later and handed over to France.
According to the prosecution, during his long stay in Yemen, Peter Cherif “met Anwar al-Awlaqi”, a radical American-Yemeni preacher, a senior member of AQAP killed by drone in September 2011, “participated in the group's military activities, having fought +briefly+ according to him”, and “contributed to the manufacture of improvised explosive devices, in the search for targets for attacks”.
The trial is scheduled to continue until October 4.
