Assigned, expelled: uncertainty for the Islamist Beghal, who leaves prison on July 16

Paris – Become in France the symbol of a globalized Islamism, Djamel Beghal will leave prison on July 16th. Paris wants to expel the Algerian fallen from his French nationality but he could be under house arrest on French soil if no agreement is found with Algiers.
  

Regarded as the mentor of Chérif Kouachi and Amédy Coulibaly, two of the perpetrators of the January 2015 attacks in Paris, Djamel Beghal, 52, has been in the sights of the French authorities since the mid-1990s. declared expellee in 2007, two years after being sentenced to 10 years in prison for criminal conspiracy.

He finishes serving a second sentence of 10 years in prison for an escape project in 2010 of Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, former member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), sentenced to life for the attack on the RER station Musée d'Orsay in 1995 in Paris.

" We work with the Algerians to welcome Beghal who no longer has French nationality ", but " if Algeria does not want it, it will be badigned to residence ", said the custody of the Seals, Nicole Belloubet. According to her, things can " completely resolve " by the time he leaves prison Rennes-Vézin.

Beghal himself 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 ", told AFP lawyer Bérenger Tourné.

" Djamel Beghal does not want to be placed under house arrest again, which amounts to being deprived of the freedom to come and go (…) Nothing should prevent his deportation since all know that he is Algerian "he added, adding that since the beginning of 2017, he has filed a request for" conditional release-expulsion "to Algeria.

– Reference –

For a good connoisseur of these files, it is impossible for the expulsion to be done without the agreement of the country of return. But France must ensure that Beghal will not be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment, on pain of being at the mercy of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Asked by AFP, the public prosecutor's office of Rennes confirmed that Djamel Beghal, who benefited as the law allows for reductions of sentence, would " finished serving his sentence on July 16 " .

From this date, " if the administrative authority decides, there may be a measure of deportation to the border, with retention ," said the same source.

The day of his release, Djamel Beghal will have carried out nearly 17 years of detention in French prisons. He has become a reference for three generations of jihadist apprentices.

Born in Algeria, he obtained French nationality by marriage. After trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan or London, he was arrested in 2001 in the United Arab Emirates and extradited to France.

Sentenced in 2005, he admitted, before retracting that he had been tortured by Emirati investigators, that he had been commissioned by a relative of bin Laden to prepare an attack on the US embbady and cultural center.

It is in the prison of Fleury-Mérogis 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 under house arrest in Cantal, pending a possible expulsion – which the ECHR then opposes. 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.

France has already expelled dozens of people considered radical Islamists. But a handful of former detainees remain in France: this is the case of Kamel Daoudi, who was sentenced at the same trial as Beghal in 2005 and has been under house arrest since 2008.

In total, nearly 450 detainees radicals must leave French prisons by the end of 2019, including some fifty " Islamic terrorists ".