It is the epilogue of a judicial soap opera of more than five years which had started with a release. Finally condemned for having provided an apartment for two jihadists of the attacks of November 13, 2015, Jawad Bendaoud will have to pay damages to the victims of the attacks and their relatives, decided, Tuesday, February 15, the Court of Cassation.
The high court, however, canceled the damages that he had been ordered to pay to the tenants and owners of the building in Saint-Denis, where the police had stormed on November 18, 2015 and during of which the two jihadists died, including the operational leader of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
In 2018, Jawad Bendaoud was sentenced to four years in prison for “concealment of terrorist criminals”. The repeat offender had rented a squat in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) for three nights, for 150 euros, to two jihadists from the attack commando.
“Impossible to trust his statements”
The Court of Appeal had justified its judgment by the fact that in its eyes the young man was guilty of having provided the apartment which allowed Abdelhamid Abaaoud, one of the masterminds of the attacks, and another jihadist, the Belgian Moroccan Chakib Akrouh, to have a hideout near the capital, while all the police services were on their heels. Unlike other members of the commando, the two terrorists had not blown themselves up as suicide bombers on the evening of November 13.
The judicial investigations showed that they probably intended to continue the massacres, by committing another attack, the following days, possibly in the business district of La Défense. The apartment lent to them by Jawad Bendaoud, through a radicalized young woman, Hasna Aït Boulahcen, 26, could therefore have enabled them to take action more easily. It was only the RAID attack on November 18, 2015 that stopped them.
To defend himself, Jawad Bendaoud has always maintained that he did not know that he was harboring jihadists. As proof, in particular, the fact that there were intermediaries between him and the terrorists. But the Court of Appeal held that it was “impossible to trust his statements”.