In any case, one of the main suspects is missing from the courtroom: Oussama Atar. He is on trial but is said to have been killed in a Western airstrike on Syria in 2017. The Belgian-Moroccan Atar was in IS territory, in Raqqa, where he played a leading role within the terrorist movement. It is suspected that he directed the terrorists from Syria.
He ordered the attacks, selected the people to carry them out and gave them instructions. “He organized the departure of terrorists from Syria (to Europe, ed.), provided money, telephones and false passports and kept in touch with them throughout their journey from Syria to Belgium.”
Many suspects come from Belgium. The terror cell located there and preparing the attacks in Paris was also responsible for the attacks that took place in Brussels in March 2016.
Plan for attack on Schiphol
The group would also have had the plan to commit an attack at Schiphol, Justice writes. In 2016, a computer belonging to the terrorists was found in Belgium containing a file with the name ‘Group Schiphol’. An audio recording was also found in which one of the members of that cell says that ‘American, Russian and Israeli aircraft’ are a target.
Tunisian Sofien Ayari and Swede Osama Krayem, who are both on trial in Paris, traveled ‘on the evening of November 13, 2015 to Schiphol Amsterdam, as part of the project to strike simultaneously at that airport and in France’, according to Justice. .
They took the bus from Brussels, stayed in the Netherlands for six hours, and then traveled back without committing an attack.
Why the two did not strike, and what they did do in the Netherlands, remains unclear to this day. Krayem is said to have told the police that he and Ayari did not want to attack the airport that November 13. But there was a plan in place. “Given the circumstances at the time, it is clear that something had to be done at Schiphol,” Krayem is said to have said, according to newspaper Le Monde.
Reconstruct
The 20 men who will face trial in Paris over the next nine months are officially suspected of participating in a terrorist organization and complicity in the attacks. A number of them belonged to the organizers, according to the justice system, others rendered assistance. For example, some provided explosives and some arranged shelter for the perpetrators.
In the coming weeks, the court will mainly spend reconstructing the events in 2015 and hearing from the victims and next of kin. The interrogation of the fourteen suspects will only start in November. A verdict is expected at the end of May at the earliest.
Here’s a look back at the attacks by IS terrorists in Paris on November 13, 2015:
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