Peter Cherif was expected to remain silent on Tuesday, September 17, the second day of his trial before the Special Criminal Court in Paris. “I will not answer questions, Madam President”He politely opposed, with his arms crossed and his eyes downcast, each attempt by the court to investigate his personality, to which this day was dedicated.
With his grey suit, black tie and calculated silences, this 42-year-old veteran of the jihad, with the false air of a banker, who fought in Iraq before spending seven years in the ranks of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen, then thought he had taken control of the audience. This figure of Islamist terrorism must answer in particular for his role in the recruitment, by Al-Qaeda, of his friend Chérif Kouachi, to carry out the attack on 7 January 2015 against Charlie Hebdo.
Peter Cherif likes to have the upper hand over situations and people. All morning, no one, neither the court nor the prosecutor, had managed to get a word out of him. And then, when the arguments resumed after the lunch break, a young girl in a flowered blouse shattered his defence strategy. Fatma A. was under the influence of the accused. She let loose at the bar in spectacular fashion and the wall of silence collapsed.
husband and brother
At first we thought she would not make it. That this trial was doomed to be a trial of unspoken words from some and terror from others. She had barely crossed the courtroom door when 32-year-old Fatma A. suffered a panic attack and hid back in the witness room. “Can’t”, “Can’t”We heard her sobbing. Then she found the strength. She returned to the great hall, staggered to the podium, and the audience erupted in a torrent of words, tears, life and laughter.
Fatma A. is a former captive. “survivor”she said. For four months in 2009, she was religiously married to Peter Cherif. four months of “violence”, of “rape” and of “kidnapping”This is the first time she has told the story of this nightmare in a criminal court. She takes a deep breath.
“Did you live with Peter Cherif?”begins the president, Frédérique Aline.
“Yes, when I was a minor”the young woman says energetically.
The tone is set. Fatma lived through hell, a prisoner of two “rots” : his older brother Boubaker El-Hakim, one of the most feared French jihadists, who sowed terror in the family home, and a friend of the latter, the accused Peter Cherif. He came to tell aloud what these two men, who had fought a few years earlier in Iraq, did to him behind closed doors of two apartments on 19th Street.my district of Paris.
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