Impassive and cold to the end.
As throughout the five weeks of hearing, Sid-Ahmed Ghlam showed no emotion on Thursday, hearing the president of the Special Assize Court condemn him to the maximum penalty, in accordance with the requisitions of the national anti-terrorism prosecution (Pnat): life imprisonment, with a safety period of 22 years.
The 29-year-old Algerian student was found guilty of the assassination of Aurélie Châtelain on April 19, 2015 in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne).
Professional magistrates also found him guilty of planning to commit a massacre in a church in the city that Sunday morning, in the name of ISIS.
Its two sponsors, two Daesh executives presumed dead, were also sentenced by default to life imprisonment.
The lawyers of Sid-Ahmed Ghlam, Mes Gilles-Jean and Jean-Hubert Portejoie, Benoît and Arnaud, who had pleaded for acquittal the day before, announced their intention to appeal.
The verdict was greeted with great emotion by the family and relatives of Aurélie Châtelain, a 32-year-old fitness teacher and mother of a little girl aged 4 and a half at the time.
Once the hearing was over, they stayed in the room for several minutes to embrace.
“We have been waiting for this outcome for a long time, it's very hard, reacts the girl's father.
Of course that will never satisfy us because it will not give us back Aurélie, but we achieved what we wanted: we did not want him to be able to go out.
"
"He remained cold, without humanity, without heart"
The civil parties, of which all the actors in this trial - prosecution as defense lawyers - have emphasized the exemplary dignity, will leave despite everything with their questions.
Sid-Ahmed Ghlam, who disputed this assassination despite the many clues against him, has not delivered any information on the circumstances of the death of Aurélie Châtelain.
“I am relieved but I would have liked him to recognize, says his mother.
Even if everything proves that it was he who killed her, there are always doubts in the back of your mind, we imagine anything and everything.
But at least he won't be able to hurt others anymore.
"
Not content to bring Aurélie Châtelain's relatives questions to their answers, Sid-Ahmed Ghlam will have shown a arrogance and a constant detachment.
“I spoke to him when I was at the bar but I saw in his eyes that he was not going to let go, regrets the mother-in-law of the victim.
He remained cold, without humanity, without heart.
I never saw an ounce of tear in him.
"
But of humanity, the father and the mother-in-law of the young woman saw it elsewhere in the box.
At the announcement of the verdict, in a particularly strong scene, Aurélie Châtelain's father went to comfort Abdelkader Jalal who had just become slightly unwell.
Sentenced to 15 years in prison, he was one of the defendants suspected of having participated, to varying degrees, in the supply of weapons to the jihadist.
“On several occasions, Abdelkader Jalal tried to make Sid-Ahmed Ghlam confess, greets Aurélie's mother-in-law.
It was something incredible.
Links have been forged with some accused.
Abdelkader Jalal's lawyers, Mes Abed Bendjador and Xavier Nogueras, have also greeted these moments of humanity.
Heavy sentences for the other accused
Beyond the case of Sid-Ahmed Ghlam, the magistrates of the Special Assize Court, chaired for the last time by Xaviere Siméoni before his retirement, pronounced heavy sanctions against the seven other defendants present , by following the Pnat's requisitions almost entirely.
The sentences range from five years suspended to 30 years in prison.
During the indictment, the general counsel had underlined how much the dimension of "support" was essential to the realization of the disastrous jihadist project.
They were followed.
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There is therefore little doubt that a second appeal will be held.
"As we feared, the court ruled under the influence of the emotion and pressure of public opinion and not in law," advised Sid-Ahmed Ghlam.
Will the latter adopt the same attitude?
“At the end of this new trial, I will tell him the same thing, warns Me Antoine Casubolo Ferro, lawyer for the family of Aurélie Châtelain: confess!
"
