A French court on Monday opened a trial against the suspected accomplice of the man who in 2016 killed a police officer couple at their home outside Paris in front of their child in a crime that shocked the country.
Mohamed Lamine Aberouz, 30, is accused of complicity in killing a public official, terrorist conspiracy and complicity in illegal detention, with the maximum penalty of life in prison.
Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, and his partner Jessica Schneider, 36, a police administrative worker, were stabbed to death at their home in Magnanville northwest of Paris.
Aberouz has maintained his innocence since he was charged in 2017.
He says he was at prayers the night of the attack, France’s first-ever killings of off-duty police officers at their home.
The killer, 25-year-old Larossi Abballa, was shot dead when a specialist response unit stormed the house to free the couple’s three-year-old child, who he was holding hostage and witnessed the killings.
Abballa was a follower of the Islamic State jihadist group.
“I reiterate my firmest condemnation towards (Abballa) for the monstrous act he committed,” Aberouz told the packed courtroom, wearing a white T-shirt with long hair tied back, thick glasses and a beard without moustache.
“I express my compassion to the victims’ family. Their search for the truth is logical. I hope I can take part. I hope I will be listened to. I reiterate that I am innocent,” he added, as Schneider’s mother and sister and Salvaing’s parents looked on.
Prosecutors argue that Aberouz was the one who singled out Salvaing and Schneider to Abballa as targets, visiting the house with the killer to identify them to him in photos stored on their computer.
His DNA was found on the wrist rest of their machine, which was also used to announce the couple had been killed.
– ‘Same ideology’ –
No other trace of his presence at the scene of the crime has been found, Aberouz’s defence said.
His lawyers, Vincent Brengarth and Nino Arnaud, say Abballa was a “lone wolf” under police surveillance and with a past conviction for conspiracy to prepare terrorist acts.
They plan to call for Aberouz to be acquitted.
But investigators argue that Aberouz and Abballa “were both motivated by the same ideology in favour of armed jihad”.
They found out that Aberouz had been in contact through Abballa with a young woman, Sarah Hervouet, who has been jailed for 20 years for knifing a plain-clothes police officer in 2016.
Aberouz himself will be questioned Tuesday about his personality and next week about the facts of the case, with the hearings slated to end on October 10.
He has already been sentenced to five years for failing to report a terrorist crime — Hervouet’s attempted car bomb attack near the Notre-Dame cathedral in central Paris.
France was from 2015 hit by a spate of attacks carried out by radical Islamists inspired by the Islamic State group, including the November 2015 suicide and gun attacks on Paris that left 130 dead.
