Peter Cherif’s line of defence is not always easy to follow. When he says he wants to talk, he remains silent. And when he says he will not talk, he sometimes talks. After a first week devoted to his personality and the statements of investigators, the trial of the Parisian jihadist reached the heart of the matter on Monday 23 September, with his questioning on the merits.
But Peter Cherif has not gritted his teeth all morning. “I won’t answer the question”He answered the questions of the special Paris court, the public prosecutor and the civil lawyers for an hour, with his arms crossed and dressed in his black suit.
This veteran of the jihad, who passed through Iraq in the mid-2000s before joining Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen for seven years, between 2011 and 2018, is on trial in particular for his role in the recruitment by this terrorist group of his childhood friend, Chérif Kouachi. It was during the latter’s brief stay in Yemen, in the summer of 2011, that AQAP recruited him and trained him to carry out an attack against Charlie Hebdomission that will take place on January 7, 2015.
A few weeks after his surprise arrest in Djibouti on December 16, 2018, Peter Cherif assured French investigators that he would explain himself in court. But on the second day of his trial, Tuesday, September 17, he finally announced that he would not answer any questions. Then his religious ex-wife, Fatma A., gave damning testimony about the man he was, accusing him of “rape” and of “kidnapping”, forcing Peter Cherif to come out of his silence to correct the devastating effect of this statement.
“I thank Mr.me A. for making me face my realitydeclared. I would like to apologize to him in front of all of you and in front of all of France. (…) METROme A. actually suffered certain pressures from his family and from me, we imposed on him an Islam that is in contradiction with what our holy Prophet (sa) teaches. (…). Thank God today I can say to you: we have been unjust to you, unjust to Muslims, unjust to men. (…). I thank you for humiliating me. Public humiliation is a blessing. Given all the time I spent in detention, all my reading, I feel compelled to condemn this past. I’ll be honest: I don’t expect anything from this trial. No matter how much punishment you ask for, this is an opportunity for me to take responsibility for my mistakes.
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