It is the portrait of a “comprehensive jihadist”of one of the most powerful Islamist terrorists ever tried in France, whom the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) dismissed on Wednesday, October 2. At the end of a relentless prosecution that lasted more than four and a half hours, the prosecutor requested that Peter Cherif be sentenced to life imprisonment, with a security period of twenty-two years, for “terrorist criminal association” and “kidnapping in connection with a terrorist enterprise.”
“Faced with the maximum penalty, which we would never like to face, we looked for personality elements that would allow us to rule it out. We didn’t find any. His jihad is deeply intellectualized, blocked and will not come out of it again. “He fought with us, fights with us and will never stop fighting with us.”explained Aurélie Valente, one of the two representatives of the PNAT, before concluding: “In perpetuity, so that the society we represent remains safe. In perpetuity, so that the society we represent remains free. »
Throughout this two-voice accusation, the prosecutor supported his “intimate conviction” that this 42-year-old jihad veteran was guilty of all the acts for which he is being tried before the special court in Paris. Guilty above all “multiple activities” with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, where he spent seven years. Guilty of having been one of the jailers of three French humanitarian workers detained by this group in 2011. Guilty, finally, of having “participated in the preparation” of the attack of charlie hebdoperpetrated by his friend Chérif Kouachi, on January 7, 2015.
“The cornerstone of the attack project”
“Peter Cherif occupies a unique place in the galaxy of global jihad, for his longevity and for the organizations he has joined”insisted Benjamín Chambre, the other magistrate who spoke on behalf of the prosecution. When he joined AQAP in Yemen in 2011, after having fought in the ranks of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in the 2000s, “He chose the most dangerous jihadist organization of the time, the one that commits the most sophisticated attacks, the one that represents the highest level of threat to the West.”
He occupied no less than “nine activities”Aurélie Valente detailed: “AQAP executive”, “owner”, “recruiter” foreign candidates to carry out attacks, “translator”, “propagandist” inside Qaidista magazine Inspired, “external operations member”for which I was researching objectives, but also “artificer”, “military instructor” and finally “jailer”in particular three members of the NGO Triangle Generation Humanitarian.
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