Trained in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda in the 1980s, this Frenchman, a former jihadist, made it his duty to bear witness to the recruitment process and the workings of radical Islamism. David Vallat was found dead in Saint-Raphaël. An investigation is open.
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The Toulon Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation to establish the causes of David Vallat’s death. The former jihadist was found dead in Saint-Raphaël in the Var, France 3 Côte d’Azur learned from Draguignan public prosecutor Pierre Couttenier, confirming information from Var-Matin.
In June 2024, David Vallat was the guest of ICI 19/20. An interview during which he made it clear that he did not appreciate the term “repentant of jihad” because he enters into reasoning with the notion of forgiveness. His approach was quite different, in deciphering it, making it understood, to better combat jihadism.
He told his story in a book called Youthful terror published by Calmann-Lévy.
David Vallat’s conversion is linked to the events in Bosnia. He then went there, to take up arms alongside the Bosnians, at the time when Croatia and Bosnia declared war.
For more than three weeks, David Vallat and his friends tried to join the fighting units without succeeding. They escape death, unarmed, several times.
I needed an ideology to keep from flinching.
David VallatJune 2024, France 3 Côte d’Azur.
David Vallat becomes the first French convert trained in Afghanistan. Back in France, the man manages an arms supply chain for the Algerian GIA (Armed Islamic Group). Arrested and tried as part of the investigation into the attacks in Paris, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
A counter-example of radicalization in prison
David Vallat is then convinced that he will be tortured and then executed after his custody. The reality was quite different.
They offer me a lawyer, a doctor. I am treated humanely. If I had been incarcerated in the equivalent of Guantanamo, I think I would have been locked into this ideology, without allowing me to escape from it.
In prison, David Vallat plunges into introspection. He then undertakes, what he calls, a process of disengagement.
In February 2016, the man shared, on France 3, his feeling of embodying a counter-example of radicalization in prison.
David Vallat then draws up a recruitment chronology leveled downwards: from 1979 until 2003, Al Qaeda formed “cadres capable of creating units in their country of origin, designating objectives and striking”. From 2003 to 2011, we want “field workers in Iraq to oppose the Western coalition. The 3rd generation will “join Daesh which enjoys the management of a territory as large as Belgium with 11 million civilians”.
Today, the 4th generation is made up of people who find themselves in a sentimental, emotional, psychological impasse. jihad promises them forgiveness of their sins and the promise of paradise.
To the two questions from France 3 last June: Can we live a normal life after Jihad? Are you still threatened with death?
David Vallat responded with an Afghan proverb: “If you submit out of fear of death, you are already dead.”
And to add “I chose not to live in fear”.
This Monday, October 21, his body was found lifeless in Saint-Raphaël.
