Given a few minutes, Abdelwahab C., 20 years old, would probably have received a lighter sentence this Wednesday at the Senlis court. Indeed, the geolocation of his mobile phone placed him near Pontpoint, at 10:45 p.m., on the night of March 16 to 17, at the precise time when he is suspected of having fired a mortar at a BAC patrol on the Rouher plateau of Creil.
A providential alibi which was shattered a few minutes before the end of the hearing, when an email from the Creil police station came to clarify that for a question of time zone, there is one hour too long on all the boundary times recorded on the young defendant's phone.
Enough to directly place Abdelwahab C. rue Mendès France, in Creil, at 10:45 p.m. that evening, in a very agitated area, with several dozen groups of young people in the streets. “Because of the operations carried out against drug trafficking in the sector,” believes the prosecutor. “Because two young people on a motorbike were knocked down by police officers the same evening,” replies Me Anaïs, Abdelwahab C’s lawyer.
“Impossible, I wasn’t there”
Called for trash fires, a BAC crew found themselves faced with around twenty young people, among whom the four officials formally identified Abdelwahab. C, carrying a long object resembling a stick. The police turn around but their vehicle is targeted by mortar fire. “Impossible, I was not there‚ assures the defendant, I had not yet returned from Compiègne at that time. »
The young man admits, on the other hand, that he was indeed on the Creil set an hour later, when the police saw him strolling rue Henri-Dunant with a walkie-talkie in his hand, which he used to warn his interlocutors of the position of law enforcement. “They’re on the square, get out!” », the BAC agents hear him say.
“I didn't speak on the walkie-talkie, it was a friend who asked me to give it to another friend, it's true that I shouldn't have accepted,” concedes the young man from Creille. Because in the meantime, the evening has seriously degenerated on the Creil plateau, where more than 200 angry young people are in the streets, notably surrounding the fire station.
Abdelwahad C. will be arrested the next day at his home and confronted by four police officers who maintain their formal identification of the person who shot them with a mortar. “We want to be heard, so that justice does not wait until one of us becomes crippled because of a mortar shot,” one of them will say through the voice of his lawyer.
Message received since Abdelwahad C. was found guilty of all the facts and was sentenced to one year in prison with suspended probation. He will also have to pay 600 euros in damages to each of the four police officers.