From “A like Abrini” to “Z like Zaventem”: at trial of 13-November, case Mohamed Abrini

A Belgian investigator told the course of this accused, between his departure for Syria and a mysterious mission in the United Kingdom. The work of Belgian services has again been at the heart of the debates.

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Since the beginning of the trial, Mohamed Abrini has spontaneously stated repeatedly that he was “not the sponsor” of the attacks of 13-November. A clarification all the more saggen than it is not what he is accused, and that no one has ever insinuated nothing like this. It is more difficult, on the other hand, to define what was the exact role of this 37-year-old radicalized offender in this terrorist cell, both the shadow areas surrounding his acts.

An investigator of the Belgian federal police attempted, Tuesday, November 30, to trace his facts and actions between August 2014 and August 2015 (the schedule provides that the continuation of the events will be mentioned another day). The witness begins his statement by a statement made by this voluble accused during the instruction: “My career is like the letters of the alphabet: the first letter is the A, like Abrini, the last Z, like Zaventem.” His Jihadist route, concluded by a suicide-suicide bombing in March 2016 at Zaventem Brussels airport, opens on a chapter of family history.

In the investigator, it is a drama in the accused’s family who would at the origin of his failover. “It all started on August 4, 2014,” explains the police officer by quoting about the interested party and his loved ones. Mohamed Abrini purges a prison sentence when he learns by phone the death of his little brother, Souleymane, killed by bullets in Syria in an ambush tense by the troops of Bashar al-Assad. “I hang up, I’m doing three steps and I’m falling,” says Abrini during the investigation. A month later, he comes out of prison: “I farted a cable, I thought,” I go out, I’m leaving “”

the “Brake” and the “hemp”.

The police officer estimates that “other factors” influenced his jihadist moult, including the departure in Syria of several friends from Molenbeek, the Brussels municipality where he grew up with his two childhood friends: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the chef Operational of 13-November, and Salah Abdeslam, the only member of the commandos still alive. Leaving out of prison, “I saw my empty neighborhood, they were all dead, in ten months. At first, I did not care, it was on TV, I zapped. After, it touched people from the neighborhood … all these friends killed, the more my brother … I had ever read the Koran, that’s where I started reading it. “

Mohamed Abrini asks his wife to veil, announces to his loved ones he wants to leave in Syria and spend his time with begins, the coffee of the Brothers Abdeslam, to watch videos of the organization Islamic State (EI) . One of them is very successful in a small circle of regulars: we see Abaaoud dragging the corpses of Syrians behind a pickup. Abrini’s little brother, who fought in the same brigade, appears in the image. “The death of Souleymane, the voyage of videos … All that had to reinforce Mohamed Abrini’s radical character and influence his departure”, summarizes the policeman.

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/Media reports.