First Paris attacks trial set over jihadist hideout
French judges will this week try the first case linked to the November 2015 terror attacks that left 130 people dead, as a man accused of helping hide the alleged ringleader appears in court. The defendant, 31-year-old Jawad Bendaoud, provided one of the few reasons to laugh after the atrocities two years ago with a strange and darkly comic television interview that was widely parodied online. Starting Wednesday, the court will seek to determine whether he was a fellow conspirator in the most bloody attack on French soil since World War II -- or simply a thuggish petty criminal unknowingly caught up in it. The case will turn on what he knew about two men he agreed to lodge in his grubby apartment on the Rue du Corbillon in the tough Saint-Denis area north of Paris days after the attacks. One of them was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a senior Islamic State jihadist suspected of being the coordinator of the Paris attacks, while the other was an accomplice suicide bomber. "I didn't know they were terrorists," Jawad shrugged on BFM television in a deadpan interview in the early hours of November 18 as anti-terror police surrounded his apartment. "Someone asked me for a favour, I helped them out," he said, wearing a leather jacket with his hair gelled back, in a clip that became a viral sensation. Listeners wondered how he could be so naive -- the capital was on lockdown at the time as police searched for jihadists on the run -- and Bendaoud was arrested soon after he finished his nonchalant TV appearance. The Saint-Denis native is "the one we laughed about having cried so much," his lawyer Xavier Nogueras said. Bendaoud will go on trial alongside one his friends, Mohamed Soumah, as well as the brother of Hasna Aitboulahcen, a woman killed in the jihadist hideout. - Sprawling case - Bendaoud has a long criminal record and received an eight-year sentence for killing a man during a fight over a mobile phone. He was released in 2013. A user of cocaine and a pot-smoker, he was described by locals as a typical fixer in the criminal underworld in Saint-Denis, a multi-ethnic suburb a short train ride from central Paris. Anti-terror police killed Abaaoud and his accomplice Chakib Akrouh, as well as Aitboulahcen, in a ferocious assault on their hideout that left the property riddled with bullet marks and structurally damaged. Abaaoud and Akrouh, who were suspected of preparing a suicide attack on the La Defense business area of Paris, had been tracked to the apartment by the intelligence services. A total of 130 people were killed in the November 15, 2015 assaults by 10 heavily armed jihadists who attacked the national stadium, bars and restaurants as well as the Bataclan concert hall. Only one of the suspected gunmen survived, Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested in Belgium four months later. He has refused to cooperate with investigators and remains in solitary confinement. He is to go on trial in Belgium on February 5 over a shootout with police that left several officers wounded but led to his capture. - 'I'm the victim' - Around 15 people are in custody or subject to an arrest warrant as part of the sprawling French probe into the Paris attacks that has seen investigators travel to Belgium, Morocco and Turkey. The fall of IS strongholds in Syria and Iraq has kindled investigators' hopes of ensnaring some of the other ringleaders, including a Belgian-Moroccan called Oussama Atar who is thought to have worked from Raqa. He continues to insist he is innocent and has attacked police officers and set fire to his cell while in custody. "I'm the victim," he shouted in a court appearance on October 30. "I've been in jail for two years for absolutely nothing. You think I'm guilty, but I didn't know anything!" He faces six years in jail if convicted. The case is expected to last three weeks until February 14.
