Testimony – Jihad veteran Peter Cherif finally admitted during his trial to having participated in the kidnapping of three French aid workers in Yemen, between May and November 2011
To the specially composed assize court,
“Oh shit!” Amélie thought to herself on May 28, 2011, as she saw a 4×4 speeding by, trying by all means to block the car she shared with Pierre and Léa, humanitarians in Yemen, like her. However, the three engineers from the Triangle Génération Humainitaire association, who had arrived in the country three months earlier, did not panic excessively. Not even when they saw four men get out of the car, a Kalashnikov slung over their shoulders. Before leaving to work in this particularly unstable region, they were told that they were exposing themselves to a risk of kidnapping, but, they were told, these are perpetrated by tribal groups and do not last more than a few days.
“We quickly realized that it wasn’t going to last two weeks and that it wasn’t related to the tribal context,” Amélie recalled eleven years later, before the specially composed assize court. Sitting in the dock, Peter Cherif – black suit, white tie that blends into a shirt of the same color – listened, arms crossed, staring into space, as she recounted those five and a half months spent in the hands of Al-Qaeda(…) Read more on 20minutes
