07:25 – Islamist Djamel Beghal leaves prison, uncertainties remain about his fate



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Symbol of a globalized Islamism, Djamel Beghal released this Monday from prison in France but the future of this Algerian fallen from French nationality remains uncertain. Paris, who is waiting for Algiers to go ahead and expel him, could place him in the waiting room or put him under house arrest.

"We are working with the Algerian authorities. I hope we will find the right solution, "Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told Radio Clbadique on Thursday that" in any case, Beghal will be under absolute surveillance. "

Considered the mentor of Cherif Kouachi and Amédy Coulibaly, two of the perpetrators of the January 2015 attacks in Paris, Djamel Beghal, 52, has been in the viewfinder of the French authorities since the mid-1990s. He was declared expellee in 2007, two years later. to be sentenced to 10 years in prison for terrorist criminal conspiracy.

On Monday, he finished serving a second 10-year sentence for an escape project in 2010 of Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, formerly of the Group is Algerian armed llamas (GIA) sentenced to life for the attack on the RER station Musée d'Orsay in Paris in 1995.

Detained at the Vezin-le-Coquet prison, in Brittany (north-west of France). he obtained an exceptional reduction of sentence of 20 days which advanced the date of his release, initially planned for August 5.

For several weeks, the French authorities, who wish to see this cumbersome character return to Algeria, discuss with Algiers conditions of his return to his native country he had left at the age of 21 to come to France.

According to a source close to the case in Algiers, the discussions would be at the stage of "the mechanism for issuing the consular pbad", a travel document issued to an Algerian national wishing to return to his country but without a pbadport valid.

Beghal supports this option. "Ten years ago, we had blocked his deportation to Algeria because of the risk of torture and the climate seems now more peaceful," said his lawyer Bérenger Tourné AFP.

– "Situation unpublished "-

For a good connoisseur of these files, it is impossible that the expulsion is done without the agreement of the country of return. If Algiers gives the green light, an expulsion order will be issued and Beghal sent directly back to Algeria.

But if the agreement is slow to intervene, the Islamist may be placed in a detention center, for a maximum of 45 days, like all foreigners in an irregular situation awaiting deportation. He can finally be placed under house arrest if no agreement with Algiers is found.

"Djamel Beghal does not want to find himself again under house arrest, which amounts to being deprived of freedom to come and go (.. Nothing should oppose his expulsion since all know he is Algerian, "said Bérenger Tourné.

As to the hypothesis of a refusal by Algeria to welcome his client, he speaks of "an unprecedented situation": "If Algeria does not want him any more then there is no doubt about his nationality, then, it makes him a kind of stateless, which is against the law "

On the day of his release, Djamel Beghal will have spent nearly 17 years in detention in French prisons. He became a reference for three generations of jihadist apprentices.

Sentenced in 2005, he admitted, before retracting that he had been tortured by Emirati investigators, that he had been appointed by a relative of bin Laden to prepare a bombing against the US embbady and cultural center

It is at the prison of Fleury-Mérogis, in the Paris region, that he meets the future perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo killings and the Hyper Cacher store. According to the investigators, he becomes their "mentor", respected for his "religious science".

Released in 2009, he is placed under house arrest in the Cantal (center), pending a possible expulsion – which is then opposed. the ECHR. Photos show him alongside Amédy Coulibaly, who came to visit him. He was arrested again in 2010, and spent a total of about 10 years in solitary confinement.

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