Soldiers overthrown in Levallois in 2017: Algerian driver sentenced to 30 years in prison

by

Published on :

Hamou Benlatreche was sentenced Monday in Paris to thirty years imprisonment, accompanied by a security sentence of twenty years, for “attempted terrorist assassinations” of soldiers from Operation Sentinel, August 9, 2017 in Levallois-Perret. Six soldiers were injured, three of them seriously.

The Algerian national Hamou Benlatreche was sentenced, Monday, December 13 in Paris, to thirty years imprisonment, accompanied by a security sentence of twenty years, for “attempted terrorist assassinations” of soldiers of Operation Sentinel in August 2017 in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine), injuring six of them.

“The action to strike the soldiers was voluntary and could not be explained by a fleeting discomfort”, ruled the president of the special assize court, which also pronounced a definitive ban from French territory for this man aged 41 years old, arrived in France in 2009.

This verdict is identical to the requisitions of the Advocate General. Hamou Benlatreche, tried for a week before a special assize court, faced life imprisonment.

On August 9, 2017, driving his VTC, he mowed down soldiers from Operation Sentinel who were preparing to go on patrol, before fleeing and being arrested, five hours later, near Calais ( Pas-de-Calais). Six soldiers were injured, three of them seriously, and a total of nine of them became civil parties.

Premeditation of the attack

The Algerian, who arrived in France in 2009 for medical reasons – he suffers from a brainstem cavernoma, a serious malformation of the blood vessels in the brain – has always claimed that it was an accident. According to him, he lost control of his vehicle due to discomfort and his right leg was then stuck on the accelerator.

The court, composed of a president and four assessors (three women and one man), however ruled that “the depositions of the three soldiers who described the determined look of the accused” just before the shock as well as “the description of the path of the vehicle “slowly advancing down the aisle before turning off and accelerating sharply” was inconsistent “with this explanation for unconsciousness.

In addition, she considered that the passages of Hamou Benlatreche in this path “almost never taken” at least twice in the days preceding the events signified his premeditation of the attack.

She also retained the “relationship with a terrorist company”, evoking the interest of the accused for the actions of the Islamic State group and judging that his act reflected a “desire to intimidate the authorities and to transmit terror in the population”.

Hamou Benlatreche, who has ten days to appeal, did not react to the reading of the verdict.

“Justice has been served”, declared to AFP one of the wounded soldiers, Romuald, satisfied that the court had accepted the premeditation and the will to kill: “All that we were confronted with during this attack . “

With AFP