At the November 13 trial, the ease and subtle responses of Mohamed Bakkali – archyde

Interest slowly awakened, it became more and more lively, curiosity sharpened and never wavered. What does it have to do with it? No doubt the ease and subtlety of the expression. With this particular way of listening to the questions, the face both concentrated and open, and the care given to each of the answers. Wednesday, November 3, Mohamed Bakkali, 34, suspected of being one of the logisticians of the attacks of November 13, 2015, revealed a personality that already contrasts with those of the first five defendants called, like him, to unfold the thread of their biography before the special assize court in Paris. Sentenced to twenty-five years of criminal imprisonment in the Thalys affair, where he is accused of having conveyed the main perpetrator of the attack, Ayoub El-Khazzani, and his principal, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Mohamed Bakkali has always proclaimed his innocence. He appealed. “Your criminal record is therefore blank”, notes President Jean-Louis Périès.

Mohamed Bakkali was born in 1987 in Verviers, Belgium, to Moroccan parents who immigrated at the end of the 1970s. Initially a worker in a sawmill, his father set up on his own by opening a body shop. The family lives in a lodge outside of town, with a garden. “A united family, a beautiful place, said Mohamed Bakkali. I played football in a club, there was the municipal library, I read a lot. ” At home, Berber is spoken and the six children are brought up with respect for the Muslim religion. “I have never drunk alcohol, never played at the casino”, the accused spontaneously specifies, as if to distinguish himself from the tormented youth of several of his box neighbors, including Salah Abdeslam.

Stays in Cairo and Istanbul

Each summer, the family goes to the village of Rif, where the parents are from. From this happy period which lasts until he is 13, he has, he says, ” nostalgia “. In adolescence, his studies become a little more chaotic.

” What happened ?, asks the president.

– Something doesn’t necessarily have to happen… ”

Mohamed Bakkali obtained his vocational baccalaureate and worked on bodywork with his father. “It was there that I started to learn Arabic, to speak with clients. ” At the same time, he launched into the recycling of metals, then into counterfeiting. “Clothes, watches, sneakers, perfumes, I sold semi-wholesale. ” One of his associates is then Khalid El Bakraoui, who will commit with his brother Ibrahim the suicide attacks of March 22, 2016 in the metro and at Brussels airport.

You have 62.91% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.