Almost 8 years following the electroshock of the jihadist attacks once morest Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, Ali Riza Polat was once more found guilty of complicity in the crimes of Saïd and Chérif Kouachi as well as Amedy Coulibaly. He was sentenced Thursday to life imprisonment.
At first instance, in December 2020, this offender who has always denied being a “terrorist” was sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment.
The Paris special assize court ruling on appeal increased this sentence, following the requisitions of the general prosecutor’s office who asked him to “protect” society from a man of “extreme danger” and to “send a clear message” to those who would be “tempted to help a terrorist”. The professional magistrates have combined this sentence with a security period of twenty years.
After six weeks of debate and more than nine hours of deliberation, Ali Riza Polat, a 37-year-old Franco-Turkish man, broad in a white sweatshirt, got up following the verdict was announced and pretended to leave. the box, before sitting down once more. In the courtroom, the handful of civil parties present welcomed the verdict in a heavy silence and an ounce of amazement.
Speaking one last time on Thursday before the court retired to deliberate, Ali Riza Polat reiterated his innocence of the charges once morest him. “I never woke up one morning to destroy the lives of these people.”
“Decisive help”
Presenting himself willingly as a thug who “loves money”, this close friend of the Hyper Cacher killer Amedy Coulibaly has just admitted having recovered a bag of “rotten” weapons in the summer of 2014, assuring that they were intended for “robbery”. “If I had provided the weapons, I would have assumed,” he said.
For the prosecution, this “right arm” and “ideal accomplice” of Amedy Coulibaly, with whom he grew up in Grigny (Essonne), was “at the heart of the preparations for these monstrous killings”.
He “provided decisive assistance to the terrorists” who had acted in a concerted manner on January 7, 8 and 9, 2015, and “in full knowledge of the facts” of their projects, had asserted the general counsel Manon Brignol.
Ali Riza Polat was particularly “at the heart of the negotiations” in the search for weapons, according to the public prosecutor. “The nature of these weapons can only sign an obvious desire for violent action,” said President Jean-Christophe Hullin, rendering the deliberation.
The court also sentenced to thirteen years in prison – two thirds of which are security – another close friend of Amedy Coulibaly, Amar Ramdani, also retried for having provided weapons to the future killer of the Hyper Cacher.
“Nothing to see”
The public prosecutor’s office had requested confirmation of the maximum sentence of twenty years’ imprisonment for criminal terrorist association pronounced at first instance. The very marked face, Amar Ramdani, 41, seemed to accuse the blow.
He hammered during the debates that he had “nothing to do” with the weapons or with the attacks, and demanded an acquittal. “I just wish I might be heard. I’ve been saying the same thing for eight years. It’s the truth,” he told the court in the morning.
The defense called on the court on Wednesday to “rigor”, considering that the “hypotheses” presented by the prosecution on the recovery of weapons via two channels used by Amedy Coulibaly, one from Lille, the other Belgian, might not constitute “evidence” of guilt.
three days of terror
During three days of terror, from January 7 to 9, 2015, the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly carried out the jihadist fight on French soil, once morest freedom of expression, the police and the Jewish community, and killed 17 people, including cartoonists Cabu and Wolinski. Their murderous and coordinated journey had ended with their death during a double police assault.
These attacks marked the beginning of a disastrous series of jihadist attacks, with that of November 13, 2015, the trial of which ended in June, and that of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on July 14, 2016, currently judged in the same courthouse.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
