After having denied it for a long time, Jean-Philippe Steven Jean Louis admitted on Friday most of the facts of which he is accused at the trial of the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray attack, assuming to have done “something serious” without understand “the scope”
During a laborious interrogation before the special assize court in Paris, the former propagandist of the Islamic State (IS) group, however, struggled to convince that he was no longer imbued with radical Islamist ideology, making tell the prosecution that he was “not at the end of his consciousness”.
“Who is the real Steven Jean Louis”? The “nice” boy described by his entourage or the broadcaster of violent jihadist content?, wondered the president of the court.
Last of the three defendants in the box to be questioned, the 25-year-old young man is accused of terrorist criminal association, just like Farid Khelil and Yassine Sebaihia.
The fourth defendant, Rachid Kassim, the only one to be dismissed for complicity in the assassination of Father Hamel in his church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime), on July 26, 2016, is presumed dead in Iraq.
The two assassins, Abdel-Malik Petitjean and Adel Kermiche, were killed by the police after the attack.
Jean-Philippe Steven Jean Louis admits having massively relayed IS propaganda via his Telegram channel, having tried to reach Syria with Abdel-Malik Petitjean in June 2016 and then having planned a new start with the young jihadist and his cousin, Farid Khelil.
He assumes the establishment of pots to finance this project or support people from the radical Islamist movement.
He also admits having accompanied a 15-year-old Belgian minor to Roissy airport in May 2015, knowing that he intended to go to Syria, while contesting the qualification of “subtraction of a minor”.
“I couldn’t say no (…) I didn’t want to get into all that,” he justifies himself.
– “For fun” –
On the other hand, he assures that he never considered violent action and did not know that Abdel-Malik Petitjean “was going to carry out an attack”.
The day after the attack, while the identity of the jihadist is not yet known, the accused wrote to Farid Khelil: “I believe akhy (my brother, editor’s note) that it was he who did the thing to the church (…) He no longer wanted to leave but to hit here. Allahou Ahlem”.
“He said + I believe + and added + it’s God who knows +, that’s all the difference”, underlines after the hearing his lawyer, Béranger Tourné.
“The words are stubborn”, it is “an exchange of limpid clarity”, judge on the contrary the general counsel Saliha Hand-Ouali.
The videos of IS abuses he broadcasts? “When I am behind my computer, I have no perspective at all”, analyzes the accused, recalling that he then spent eight hours a day online.
His message asserting to Abdel-Malik Petitjean and Farid Khelil: “we are terrorists, we terrorize the enemy”? “I know it’s serious, what I said” but it was “for fun”, he says.
The “contacts in Raqqa”, which he claims to have? Boasting, “on social networks, you can easily invent a life”.
Asked about the broad smile he constantly wears, he assures: “it’s just my way of speaking, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care”.
“Why did you say that France is a + land of koufars +?” Asks the court. “In theology, there is a distinction between a land of Islam and a land of disbelief,” he replies, taking up what the president describes as an “extremely literal and dated reading” of Islam.
A report carried out during his detention, in 2019, worries that he could be again “instrumentalised for terrorist purposes”, because of the “malleable and influenceable character of his personality”.
“I was a totally immature person. I grew more during these six years in detention than during my whole life”, assures the accused.
He said he was touched by the “dignity” of the civil parties, who expressed neither “animosity” nor “hate”. “It’s difficult to be in front of them, difficult even to watch them. If I have one word to say to them, it’s + sorry +”.