When Abderrahim Melhaoui signed up for Syria, there was no question of abuses and atrocities for him. A duty of mutual aid animated the 35-year-old from Molenbeek: to help the Syrian Muslims delivered to the cruel regime of Bashar el-Assad. Melhaoui left there, on April 3, 2013, to fight Bashar, and not to help Daesh, which was not yet talked about in Syria. They left in pairs, in the spirit of helping people in suffering.
Daesh arrived in 2014, installing the “caliphate” there. There, it quickly became too late to escape without being considered a traitor, and risk the fate that goes with it.
In Molenbeek, his family believed him dead for a long time. It was thanks to three Belgian journalists that she learned, in October 2021, that he was alive, a prisoner of the Kurds.
Our colleagues Louis Collart, Pierre-Yves Thienpont and Jean-Pierre Martin had been able to meet him. Alive but in poor condition, amputated in particular of part of the left leg, torn off by a mortar shell.
His family, who wanted to confide in La DHimplores Belgium to do everything possible to repatriate him “before it is too late”. This is one of the brothers speaking here. “Last month, sixteen children and six mothers detained in a camp under Kurdish control were brought back from Syria. It is in the name of the same humanitarian duty that we implore Prime Minister Alexander De Croo to organize the return of Abderrahim Melhaoui We have the ability to do it for children and mothers, so why not for him? Doing nothing would be a sort of selective sorting, it would be terrible.”.
To journalists from Evening and LN24, Melhaoui explained that in 2013, the international community was watching, “arms crossed”Bashar “commit genocide”. Abderrahim Melhaoui denies having been indoctrinated in mosques or by preachers like Zerkani or Jean-Louis Denis. “I listened to scholars from Saudi Arabia who said to go there. Go ahead, they said, it is the duty of a Muslim to help his neighbor.”
Arriving among the very first Belgians, Melhaoui quickly realized that in fact, “They didn’t need us too much. In fact, they were capable enough on their own”.
The Brussels electrician (in an elevator firm) had never held a Kalashnikov. He says he received rudimentary training. “They called it ‘military’ but it was just how to hold the Kalashnikov and how to take it down. It wasn’t training like you think.”
He said he was opposed to the attacks in Brussels
He would have been wounded very quickly, by bullet, “At the shoulder”one morning while guarding a checkpoint. “They started shooting, it was shooting at us too, and I picked up a bullet.”
The Belgian (he does not have Moroccan nationality) reduces his role in Syria to supplies (water, food, clothing), cooking.
The atrocities, the severed heads on the Raqqa roundabout, the hangings, the homosexuals thrown from the top of the buildings, Melhaoui claims to have participated in nothing nor to have had a Yezidi sex slave. He denies having celebrated the attacks in Brussels. “In March 2016, I was in Deir Ez-Zor, not in Raqqa. Besides, we Europeans in general, except for some perhaps, found it shocking. I did not see why the Islamic State did That. It’s not a policy that brought anything.”
To journalists who ask him if the Islam of Daesh is the real Islam, Melhaoui replied “non”.
Recently, on May 13, 2022, the Brussels Criminal Court sentenced him, by default, for participation in the activities of a terrorist group, to 5 years in prison.
We nevertheless feel the embarrassment of the court, which does not attribute any specific fact to him during his six years of presence in Syria. Melhaoui is condemned on the principle that a simple act of participation is enough, “even if minimal and punctual“.
The court accepts as a circumstance that being injured, Melhaoui never asked for his repatriation. To which the family replies that it was simply physically impossible.
The family is destroyed. The father had a stroke. The mother is a severe diabetic. The six siblings are haunted by the knowledge of him without proper care, likely to die at any moment, and being unable to do anything from Brussels. “At the Black Ponds (a neighborhood of Molenbeek), Abderrahim told young people not to touch drugs. The young people listened to him. He put more than one on the right track.”
Humanitarian emergency, legal emergency
The family chose the law firm Hamid El Abouti. He decided to appeal the 5-year sentence. For her, as for the lawyers, repatriation is an emergency.
Humanitarian emergency for the family. “We imagine that he lives in relatively hygienic conditions, with a crying lack of water, probably undernourished and suffering from extreme deficiencies. We dare not imagine what is happening in the prisons. We have no news for months.”
Legal emergency for lawyers. “We point out that while the prosecution requested it, the court did not strip Mr. Melhaoui of Belgian nationality. There is therefore a duty of Belgium in relation to this. As there will also be a trial in appeal, the presence in Belgium of Mr. Melhaoui is necessary to enable him to organize his defense and to explain himself on the facts, which he has not yet been able to do. sentenced in Belgium, he must serve his sentence in Belgium.”
The family, after receiving two letters last year, thanks to the Red Cross, has had no news since October 2021.
“We know he was alive. But what has happened for eight months? We are there, crossing our fingers, and hoping.”