Sentences of up to 11 years of criminal imprisonment were requested Tuesday before the Paris Special Assize Court against seven defendants tried since the end of January in the trial of the Trèbes and Carcassonne attacks which left four dead in 2018 .
The heaviest sentences were requested against Samir Manaa for having accompanied the assailant, Radouane Lakdim, to buy the knife which fatally injured gendarme Arnaud Beltrame, and against Marine Pequignot, the radicalized girlfriend of Lakdim, killed during of the attack by the police.
“Cowardly and by surprise”
The requisitions of the anti-terrorism prosecution took place this Tuesday.
On March 23, 2018, Radouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old radicalized petty criminal, had
“cowardly and by surprise
,” said the attorney general, shot dead a man at a homosexual meeting place in Carcassonne (Aude), then shot at police officers. was jogging, before continuing his deadly journey to the Super U in Trèbes.
There, the man who claimed to be from the Islamic State organization had shot dead an employee and a customer, before taking a cashier hostage.
Constable Arnaud Beltrame, who had taken his place, was mortally wounded.
Radouane Lakdim will be killed in the assault.
None of the accused is being tried for
“complicity”
in the crimes committed; the investigation showed that Radouane Lakdim had acted alone.
Five of these six men and one woman, relatives of the attacker aged 24 to 35, are on trial for
“terrorist criminal association”
, the other two for related offenses.
“We think that in this box there are people who knew, and not denounced, people who supported and not denounced.
And people who have committed other offenses which are not necessarily linked to this case, but which were revealed by the investigation
,” declared one of the two representatives of the anti-terrorism prosecution (Pnat), Alexa Dubourg. .
Unlike the investigating judges, the Pnat has always considered in this case that the terrorist qualification did not apply to some of the accused, and will therefore ask that it be abandoned for some of them, warned the magistrate.
Even if
“it is difficult for the victims”
, it will be necessary
“to condemn people for what they did and only what they did”
.
“Of course there is a gap”
between
the “absolute horror”
of the facts, and the reality of a trial where there was more talk of small
“city traffic”
than of the
“Irako-Syrian zone”
, recognized Ms. Dubourg.
At this hearing, there is
“no one in the box”
to pay
“the high price, the fair price in reparation for what was committed”
.
The verdict is expected Friday.