Defence lawyers launch last, crucial phase of November 2015 terror trial
After ten days of heart-rending reminders of horror from the legal teams representing the victims, followed by last week's demands for punishment from the prosecution, on Monday the Paris attacks trial moved into a different emotional realm with the first of the closing statements from those defending the 14 accused.
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The change in atmosphere could not have been more striking.
Since the start of June, we've heard the stories of the survivors, professionally retold by their lawyers. We have been chilled by the mastery of the prosecution, with their unflinching insistence on legally established facts.
This time it's personal.
Maître Judith Lévy is one of the two lawyers defending Ali Oulkadi. Oulkadi faces twenty years in jail for having given Salah Abdeslam a lift when the failed terrorist returned to Brussels the day after the Paris attacks. Last Friday, the prosecution called for him to serve five years.
Maître Lévy explained that she had originally refused to take any part in this case. "Not for the victims, not for the defence. The answer was 'No!'"
Then, completely by chance, she found herself sitting in a prison meeting room, "a cupboard with a Velux," when four prison officers brought in a broken man, handcuffed and hobbled, trembling like a beaten dog.
"He sat there and wept," explained Judith Lévy, "and in three seconds I knew that I was going to take up his defence and see it through to the end.
"That is the beauty and the importance of our profession.
"It has been an honour to defend Ali Oulkadi."
Anger at the prosecution
Lévy's partner, Maître Marie Dosé, got the final act of that defence off to a rousing start with a diatribe against some of her colleagues.
She said she was afraid. But she sounded angry.
"The accused are individuals," she reminded the court. "How many times have we heard them reduced to an anonymous group by the prosecution, by the civil lawyers?
"They became 'the prisoners', 'the terrorists', 'the men in the box'. What could be more dehumanising?"
Maître Dosé named Gérard Chemla, who represents dozens of victims, as a prime example of those who would deprive her client of the possibility of justice by "putting him in the same bag" with all the others.
"Our task is not easy. And it has not been made easier by some of our colleagues."
Then she turned her anger against the prosecution.
A pact with the devil
"We were told by the attorney general last week that Ali Oulkadi had 'made a pact with the devil'! What book of the Penal Code does that come from?
"He was, we were told, on the basis of dubious evidence from a mis-handled Belgian investigation, present at every key moment in the preparation of the attacks. In fact, no! The evidence was wrong, has since been dropped from this trial. But it cost a good man 31 months in solitary confinement.
"He is a good man. No one in this room can deny that.
"It is ridiculous to charge him with 'association with terrorists'. Yes, he admits that he saw a change in his friend Brahim Abdeslam. He saw him become more serious about religion. But, never for a moment, did he suspect that his friend was moving towards violent action.
"Oulkadi was the one who could argue with Brahim, bring him down off his high horse when he stood up on his laurels, in the famous mixed metaphor of Rafik El Hassani, a witness at this trial.
"Ali Oulkadi sent a text message to Brahim Abdeslam on 14 November 2015, asking his dead friend to contact him. 'Are you there? Is everything OK?' he wrote. He simply did not believe what had happened. It was not possible. and you call that ''involvement in a terrorist enterprise'!
"Ali Oulkadi was not a radical. He was not engaged in any cause. He had no intention to do harm. It is a scandal to have used the 'context' to prove his guilt. As if sitting beside a drug-user in a bar made you a drug-user. The charges against him are ridiculous!"
Prosecution inconsistency, incoherence
Then it was the turn of Maître Lévy. She started in a lower emotional key, wondering with professional detachment why her client risked 20 years prison for giving a lift while another, who hid the fleeing Salah Abdeslam in a cellar for 48 hours, was not even before the court.
Molenbeek. The Brussels suburb described in the testimony of a Belgian judge as a "village".
"One hundred thousand people is a big village, and everybody knows everybody else? No!
"Les Béguines was a scruffy bar where you could buy hash. The Belgian police turned it into an Islamic State fan club.
"IS videos were watched there. Does that make Ali Oulkadi a jihadist? Passivity is not the same as acceptance. Ali Oulkadi was expected to notice and link things that it took the police months to figure out.
"The stretching of the evidence by the prosecution is simply incredible."
Maître Lévy spoke about the emotional imbalance created in this trial by the six weeks of testimony from the injured and bereaved, and the danger that poses for her client.
"This trial has not been organised to please the victims, the survivors, the bereaved.
"The question is nor what to do with the suffering of the civil plaintiffs," she said, "but to administer the law."
The trial continues.
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