The Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Abrini, who is to be tried from September in Paris for the attacks of November 13, 2015, was transferred Thursday July 1 from a Belgian prison to an establishment in the Paris region, AFP learned from sources close to the case.
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Mohamed Abrini, 36, known as "
the man in the hat
" who gave up blowing himself up during the March 2016 attacks in Brussels, is among the twenty defendants whose trial for the November 13 attacks is due to begin September 8 before the special assize court of the French capital to last at least seven months. He is one of the relatives of Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the jihadist commandos who killed 130 people in Paris and in the neighboring town of Saint-Denis.
In this case, Mohamed Abrini is on trial for having accompanied the November 13 commandos to the Parisian suburbs.
CCTV images showed him in the company of Salah Abdeslam in a service station in the Oise, north of Paris, the day before the attacks.
He is also suspected of having participated in the financing of the operation and the supply of weapons.
Incarcerated in Belgium since his arrest in Brussels on April 8, 2016, he was transferred Thursday morning to a prison in the Paris region where he will remain detained throughout the trial, according to these Belgian and French sources.
14 people expected in front of the court
At this trial, six defendants will be tried by default (therefore five presumed dead) and fourteen are expected in court. Among them, eleven are currently detained, and those who are not already in the Paris region should be transferred quickly, as was Mohamed Abrini. This is particularly the case of the Tunisian Sofien Ayari and the Swedish Osama Krayem, both imprisoned in Belgium, whose transfer is imminent, according to a Belgian judicial source.
After the Parisian trial, Mohamed Abrini, Sofien Ayari and Osama Krayem will return to Belgium because they are implicated in the Belgian procedure for the attacks of March 22, 2016 (32 dead in Brussels) which should lead to a trial in the Belgian capital in September 2022. In total, six of the 20 accused at the November 13 trial, including Salah Abdeslam, will also be tried for the Brussels attacks. The attacks of November 2015 and March 2016 were claimed by the Islamic State group. They are the work of the same Franco-Belgian jihadist cell.