This is an unprecedented scenario in a terrorism case.
The mother of Mohammed Mogouchkov, the Arras attacker, asks to be recognized as a collateral victim of her son's actions and requests civil party status, which would allow her to be compensated for the alleged damage.
On October 13, his son, a 20-year-old young man familiar with the radical ideology of the Islamic State, stabbed to death French teacher Dominique Bernard and injured three other members of the Gambetta-Carnot school campus in Arras. .
Arrested immediately, he was indicted for
“assassination and attempted assassinations in connection with a terrorist enterprise”
and placed in pre-trial detention.
At the end of 96 hours in police custody, his mother Khiadi and one of the assailant's sisters, Muslima, emerged free without prosecution, but
"their lives have since collapsed"
, their lawyer, Me,
reports to Le
Figaro
. Mikaël Benillouche.
“They were evicted from the apartment in which they lived in Arras.
Today, they live in seclusion, for fear of being recognized in the street because they are associated with the terrorist act of Mohammed Mogouchkov.
We have the impression that they are undergoing a sort of house arrest even though the courts have not brought charges against them
,” he laments.
After the events, Khiadi - subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) - lost custody of her youngest daughter who is, for the moment, placed in a home.
“We are doing everything to get her back.
We hope that she will be able to find her mother and her sister for the start of the school year in September
,” projects the lawyer who believes that:
“For all these reasons, granting civil party status to the mother would allow her suffering to be taken into account. »
Jurisprudential developments
But such a decision
“would be bold”
for the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, which has already rejected the request for the first time, on November 24, recognizes Me Benillouche.
“The link between the act of terrorism and the consequences suffered by my client is indirect and the public prosecutor's office is opposed to it,”
he explains.
If case law has recently adopted a broader conception of the notion of civil party, it reserves this status for victims whose alleged harm is
“inseparable from the terrorist act”
, according to a judgment of the Court of Cassation of February 15, 2022. In addition to the victims directly targeted by the attack, it considers the status of civil party admissible in two specific situations: when a person has suffered damage while seeking to interrupt an attack, and when a person is injured while fleeing a nearby location. of an attack.
Concretely, for the trial of the attack perpetrated on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on July 14, 2016, the judges considered that the man who had tried to stop the mad rush of the truck, and who suffered “
psychological trauma serious”
, could become a civil party.
The same goes for walkers who were injured while fleeing after hearing the screams of people directly hit by the vehicle.
“A little modesty”
In its developments, case law does not mention the possibility of recognizing the moral damage suffered by the relatives of a terrorist.
“It should, however, be extended to the psychological and social consequences generated within the family of the author of an attack,”
defends Me Mikaël Benillouche.
Among the Mogushkovs, women were subjected to patriarchal domination in the name of radical Islam and Sharia law.
My client had also filed a complaint for violence perpetrated by her sons on two occasions, in November 2022 and March 2023. They were dismissed.
Faced with Khiadi's request, the mayor of Arras, Frédéric Leturque, said he was
“shocked”
.
“I understand that this lawyer has to defend his clients, but a little modesty
,” he said last November in the columns of
La Voix du Nord
.
Lawyer Antoine Casubolo-Ferro, who represents the French association of victims of terrorism (AFVT) in certain cases, tempers:
“The parents of terrorists are often the victims of their murderous sons.
At the trial of
the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray attack
, the attacker's mother came to testify in tears at the bar.
We can understand her pain, she has her place as a victim and a witness.”
On the other hand, “
it seems more complicated to me to accept that the mother of a terrorist claims financial compensation for her harm.
It would be a first
,” he tells Le
Figaro
.
The decision concerning Mohammed Mogouchkov's mother will be made this Wednesday at 2:00 p.m.