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A court of appeal will rule this Friday on whether Jawad Bendaoud is guilty or innocent of harboring two jihadists involved in the November 13 attacks in Paris in 2015, lost their lives.
In February 2018, Bendaoud was acquitted of complicity in the installation of two jihadists in a squat in Saint-Denis, north of Paris. However, his apparent jubilation on leaving prison was short-lived. The public prosecutor immediately appealed against this decision.
The "owner of Daesh" was later found guilty of "harboring terrorist criminals" after renting his apartment to Abdelhamid Abaaoud and his accomplice, Chakib Akrouh. The two men were killed during a police raid in the special operations building three days after the Paris bombings on November 18.
However, it remains to be seen how much the accused knew about the two men left in his apartment, who terrorized Saint Denis and Paris. Jawad Bendaoud, who has repeatedly insisted on his innocence, incurs a six-year prison sentence when he is found guilty.
At a hearing in court last December, the chief prosecutor, Naima Rudloff, expressed "without a doubt Bendaoud's guilt", claiming a minimum five-year prison sentence for an offender with long police history. She added that "jihadism has offered a veneer of morality to offenders in housing projects in the suburbs and that these offenders have provided support to jihadists".
According to Rudloff, "we can not trust the word of Bendaoud," highlighting the different versions of the events given by the accused: he first claimed that he was hosting "two Muslim brothers of Saint -Denis ", then" a brother and a cousin ", then" a brother who had come back from Brussels ". He rented the apartment at € 150 for three nights, a rate that, even on the black market, would be considered modest.
Anger and aggression
Jawad Bendaoud disputed this accusation during his previous two trials, claiming that he was unaware that he was leasing the squat to jihadists. He also claims that he was unaware that they were fleeing the November 13 attacks because he was not following the information. He insists "I may be a thug, but I will never become a terrorist".
At the first hearing, the criminal court concluded that it was not possible to prove that Bendaoud had sheltered two people that he knew to be terrorists. And for defense lawyer Xavier Nogueras, the second hearing failed to gather sufficient evidence to convict his client.
Bendaoud will be on the dock this Friday to hear the court's decision. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to one year in prison for uttering death threats against a victim of the Paris bombings on the sidelines of his trial last December. He denied being wrong in this case.
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