France puts Brussels Jewish Museum killer on trial as jihadist jailer in Syria

The Paris Criminal Court is trying Mehdi Nemmouche, sentenced to life imprisonment in Belgium for the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, for allegedly being the jailer of four French journalists in Syria, among others, who were held captive for nearly a year.

The central issue in this trial, which began yesterday, Monday, and is expected to last until March 21, will be whether or not it can be proven that Nemmouche was indeed the jailer identified by Western journalists and humanitarian workers who shared his prison in Syria, something he has denied during the investigation.

The case was opened after Nemmouche was arrested in Marseille on 30 May 2014, six days after he committed the anti-Semitic attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, where he stormed in and murdered four people in cold blood in less than two minutes.

When his photograph was published in the press, the four French journalists who were in the hands of the Islamic State for almost a year in Syria had no doubt that this was the man they knew by the alias 'Abou Omar', one of the executioners they had had during their captivity.

The four - Didier François, Édouard Elias, Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres - were kidnapped in June 2013. They were held in a prison where they met, among others, another journalist, the Spaniard Marc Marginedas, and two humanitarian workers, the Italian Federico Motka and the British David Haines.

All of them were released in the first half of 2014 except Haines, who was executed on September 13 of that year.

After nine years of investigation, the French courts have decided to bring Nemmouche to trial, as well as four other men, including Frenchman Abdelmalek Tanem and Syrian Kais al Abdallah, who was arrested in Germany where he and his family had obtained asylum.

Tanem, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2016 for having gone to Syria to join the jihadist movement that controlled part of the country's territory, is accused of having been part of the team of jailers.

Al Abdallah is accused of having participated in the kidnapping and detention of Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres. Both deny any involvement.

Two alleged leaders of the jihadist group that held the four Frenchmen in its hands for months and who probably died in Syria or Iraq are also to be tried in absentia: Belgian Oussama Atar, mastermind of the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, and Frenchman Salim Benghalem, linked to the perpetrators of the attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2015.

Nemmouche, who turns 40 in April, is originally from the French town of Roubaix, near the Belgian border, grew up in foster care and has a long criminal record that began when he was still a minor.

From a very young age he was repeatedly imprisoned for common crimes and it was apparently there that his religious radicalization occurred.

Westerners arrested in Syria who say they have passed through his hands have stressed during their investigation that he played a leading role and that his behaviour ranged from extreme violence to perversion, exuberance and megalomania.

In his first appearance at the trial, Nemmouche said he had not been anyone's jailer in Syria, but rather "a soldier on the front line" against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. EFE