This 75-year-old man is charged with “terrorist criminal association” during his stay in Syria from 2013 to 2018, where he was also informant French and Belgian intelligence services.
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The trial of the famous Franco-Syrian Imam Bassam Ayachi has ended on Friday, April 8, in Paris, by a requesture during which the representative of the National Anti-Terrorist Procuratorate (UNAT) requested a conviction to five years of prison including three with SUPPISTS. A sentence that would not imply a return to prison, given his pre-trial detention, the aged man today 75 years old.
Four days of hearing were not enough to get a definitive idea of this character in a thousand and one, “elusive” according to the terms of the Prosecution. Dressed in a lattice jacket, the religious to the long white beard lost the right arm in Syria in an attack committed by the Islamic State Organization (EI). All the informant of French and Belgian intelligence and warlord, Imam Ayachi has stayed in Syria, his country of birth, from 2013 to 2018.
The French justice reproaches him for having participated in a “association of terrorist criminal” during this period. Told him that he was there to liberate his country from the dictatorship of the Assad regime but also protect France and Belgium, its two countries of adoption, the threat of extremists coming to fight. While he has maintained regular and extensive contacts with intelligence services, as evidenced by email, telephone and messaging extracts, we do not know all the ins and outs of this cooperation because of the refusal of intelligence services to communicate documents on behalf of the Secret-Defense. This impediment has been the subject of a priority question of constitutionality (CQO), deemed admissible by the Court on the first day of the trial, Tuesday, April 5th.
“Not a fair trial”
The cooperation of Mr. Ayachi with French services is also attested by appointments to the French consulate in Istanbul, meetings in Beirut with a certain “M me Mary” and lists men’s payments working at the service of the Sheikh. Still, the services went up to make up to make the appointment set for Mr. Ayachi who led to his arrest in France in March 2018. Similarly, his phones have been “cleaned” before to be given to the judicial authorities. The removal order speaks of “manipulation”. “You are asked to make a decision on the basis of elements that you are not aware”, has insurgended M e Joris Monin of Flaugergues, the lawyer of Mr. Ayachi. “It’s not a fair trial we do here!” He added.
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