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Algerian Islamist Djamel Beghal, considered the mentor of Chérif Kouachi and Amédy Coulibaly, two of the perpetrators of the January 2015 attacks in Paris, was expelled Monday to his homeland after leaving a French prison
Surrendered on his arrival in Algiers "by the French authorities to the Algerian authorities", he will be retried by the Algerian justice who sentenced him in absentia in 2003 to 20 years in prison for "belonging to a terrorist group the Algerian state news agency APS reported Monday, citing a "source close to the case".
His French lawyer, Mr. Bérenger Tourné, had recently claimed that his client had never been convicted of Algeria.
Liberated Monday at the dawn of his French prison and supported by the police at the borders, the Algerian 52-year-old, stripped of French nationality, then took off shortly after 10:30 (0830 GMT) of the Paris airport from Roissy towards Algiers, about two hours away.
In the visor of the French authorities since the mid-1990s, Djamel Beghal was declared expellee in 2007, two years after being sentenced to 10 years of prison for criminal conspiracy.
In Vezin-le-Coquet, Brittany (west), he finished serving his second sentence of 10 years in prison for a project of escape in 2010 of Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, former of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) sentenced to life for the attack on the RER station Musée d'Orsay in Paris in 1995.
An Algerian lawyer who had to deal with similar cases, said under the guise of anonymity to AFP it was likely that Djamel Beghal has, on his arrival in Algiers, placed in custody, for an initial period of 48 hours extendable up to 12 days in the field of terrorism in Algeria.
The French authorities, who wanted the to return to Algeria, discussed for several weeks with Algiers the conditions of his return to his native country he had left at the age of 21 to come to France.
– "adequate solution" –
Beghal was himself in favor of 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," told AFP Me Bérenger Tourné.
In June 2017, he himself had lodged an application for "conditional release-expulsion" to Algeria, rejected by the French courts because of doubts about his "Algerianity".
This time, Djamel Beghal was especially keen not to end up in he had been placed under house arrest, which was for him "to remain deprived of freedom to come and go," explained Me Bérenger Tourné.
But his lawyer also said on Friday that "no conviction, by default or in absentia or another, has never been served to Mr. Beghal to this day. "
But the APS claims Monday night that the Algerian judicial authorities have informed their French counterparts of the facts for which Djamel Beghal was sentenced in Algeria, attempting in vain to have him extradited from France, then requesting that he be tried for these facts on the French territory, in accordance with the judicial agreements between the two countries.
A request "left unfulfilled by the French judicial authorities", said the source quoted by the APS
Djamel Beghal has made a total of nearly 17 years of 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 of US embbady and cultural center
At the Fleury-Mérogis prison in the Paris suburbs, he met the future perpetrators of the January 2015 killings at Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Hide store. According to the investigators, he becomes their "mentor", respected for his "religious science."
Released in 2009, he was placed under house arrest in the Cantal (center), pending a possible expulsion – to which he then opposes the European Court of Human Rights. Photos show him alongside Amédy Coulibaly, who came to visit him. He was arrested again in 2010 and spent a total of 10 years in solitary confinement
pr-grd-aag-ayv / epe / lv / fjb
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