In questioned Tuesday on their preparations, the childhood friend of Salah Abdeslam surprised by saying for the first time that he should have participated in the attacks, which he had always denied.
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Why was Mohamed Abrini returned to Paris disaster in Brussels on the night of November 12 to 13, 2015, after making the opposite journey a few hours earlier with the Brothers Abdeslam, in the first car of what He himself called “the convoy of death”? This is one of the mysteries of the file, but it was not the subject of his interrogation, Tuesday, March 22, since the hearing, advancing chronologically towards the evening of the attacks, was still at the stage of the preparations, between August. and early November 2015.
Accused of participating in logistics, Mohamed Abrini defends himself. For long minutes, he assures herself “nothing done” during this period: he did not seek plans to accommodate the terrorists or rented car to convey them, or bought what to make the explosives garnishing their trapped vests. His denials, sometimes confused and not credible, do not interest himself in the courtroom where, very quickly, one wonders more than a thing: to what extent was Abrini informed of what was to happen November 13, 2015?
By the detour of an anodine question, at the beginning of his interrogation, the 38-year-old Belgo-Moroccan accused revealed to meet Abdelhamid Abaaoud in Charleroi two months before the attacks, what he had never said in twenty auditions since his arrest six years ago.
“I knew something was preparing”
This revelation – perhaps involuntary, both Abrini gives the impression of never knowing what it owes or can say – leads to a shower of questions about its knowledge of the terrorist project. “I knew something was preparing but I did not know what, I did not know where,” he said during the investigation. Now that we know he met the coordinator of the attacks two months before their commission, a lot, in the room, have trouble believing there.
The President of the Court, Jean-Louis Rires: “You knew that attacks were preparing?
– I knew something was preparing, I will not deny it.
– But what?
– I knew that many people from the neighborhood were in Syria. When I hear that they come back, I know it’s not to go sightseeing, and that it will happen something. After, what … “
“What did you talk about with Abaaoud? Ask the lawyer General Nicolas Braconnay.
– everything and nothing. Of his wounds, his father, nothing special. We did not talk about attacks. Nothing extraordinary.
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