What is at stake is the fate of a man? What do the women who knew him say about him? How did a boy from a working-class town in the 19th century end up?my The Paris district has become one of the most important French jihadist areas, which has led to him being tried, since Monday, September 16, before the Special Criminal Court of Paris for his role in the attack of January 7, 2015 against Charlie Hebdo ?
On Tuesday, September 17, the second day of his trial, we saw the worst of Peter Cherif, his darkest private side. One of his ex-partners, Fatma A., whom he married religiously when she was only 17, described in court a monster. A violent and tyrannical man, whom she accuses of having forcibly kept her under vigil, confined her and raped her for several weeks. This was in 2009. Peter Cherif was then a convinced jihadist. He had returned two years earlier from Iraq, where he had fought in the ranks of Al Qaeda, and was under judicial supervision awaiting his trial.
On Wednesday, September 18, another of his former colleagues shed a completely different light on the accused, on the man he was before the jihad. Barbara P. was Peter Cherif’s first love. She met him at university and remembers a ” clown ” endearing. A few years later, in 2003, around the age of 21, the two childhood friends fell in love and became a couple. Peter Cherif had not yet become radicalised. He had not yet followed the teachings of the religious mentor of the Iraqi jihadist network known as “Buttes Chaumont”, Farid Benyettou. Religion did not interest him.
“He was funny, sweet, kind”
Barbara P. spent more than a year with Peter Cherif between 2003 and 2004, and there was even talk of marriage. She was a privileged witness to their change: “At first he did very well, he was a normal person, until he returned to religion…”recalls the man who is now the director of a nursery school in the south of France and who presents via video conference.
Barbara P. discovered in the press of the day the testimony of Fatma A., the woman who was abused by the accused six years after her story. “I didn’t recognize him. I met Peter Cherif, there you judge Bou Hamza. [son nom de guerre]. He was funny, sweet, kind, everything you could want in a boyfriend. I don’t know the person you have in front of you…”she snapped.
In just a few months, Barbara P. witnessed the metamorphosis of Peter Cherif, “lobotomized” by Farid Benyettou, like seven of his friends from the neighbourhood who also went to fight in Iraq, including Chérif Kouachi, who twelve years later would become the author, together with his brother Saïd, of the attack in Charlie Hebdo. Her lover has become another man: He refuses to be in the same room with her on the pretext that she is “a woman”, and ends up leaving her because she is not there “Muslim”.
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