A psychiatrist explained before the court the “conflict” who lives in the accused, threatened with a “depressive collapse” if he had to deny his jihadist commitment.
By
Who is Salah Abdeslam really? The “fighter” to the rigid discourse that justifies the attacks or the accused taken by the emotion that requested forgiveness to the victims during his ultimate interrogation? Since the beginning of the trial of 13-November, his ambivalence exasperates and intrigues. On the benches of lawyers and civil parties, everyone tried to find a sense of his dual speech: where some see that duplicity and provocations, others believe guess the fluctuating sincerity of a man torn between two identities.
In addition to its expertise in this area, the psychiatrist Daniel Zagury has an advantage: it is one of the few people to have been able to talk one-on-one with the accused since the beginning of the trial. Two months after the opening of the debates on November 12, 2021, he visited Salah Abdeslam in prison to conduct a psychiatric examination. The conclusions he presented at the bar, Thursday, April 21, have entered direct resonance with the questions that agitated the actors of this trial for several weeks.
Before exploring the “oscillations” of Salah Abdeslam, the expert returns to an apparent paradox: he was affair, during this interview, to an “ordinary human” engaged in a “process of totalitarian dehumanization”. “We are here confronted with the banality of evil, he starts, citing the German philosopher Hannah Arendt. How could a man so ordinary been able to participate in such a mass destruction project?”
Evil “In the name of the property”
The “narrative” of Salah Abdeslam’s jihadist engagement is similar to that of most radicalized subjects: “It’s not his insensitivity that has been the engine of his radicalization, but conversely his receptivity To the suffering of Muslims in the world, especially in Syria. The evil is almost never in the name of evil, comments on the psychiatrist: he almost always committed in the name of the property. “
From there, continues the expert, “his commitment is presented as absolute: he loses his identity moorings, his singularity, his conflicts and his doubts. He enters a totalitarian system that thinks in his place. This arsenal Totalitarian protects it from the human held before: the suffering of the victims of the attacks becomes an inevitable evil, they are no longer the chosified representatives of a country to fight. “.
This new “carapace” stifled the guilt that the young Molenbeekois felt in life dissolute to the sufferings of his “brothers” in Syria. She also brought him a narcissistic comfort and a salute: “The smallest anonymous is promised to eternal life.”
You have 48.73% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.