[Exclusif] Terrorist residing in Chartres deported to Morocco

Abdelilah Ziad, a 63-year-old Chartrain of Moroccan nationality, was handed over to the Moroccan judicial authorities on Wednesday, October 27 in the afternoon, according to our information.

A country where he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, for his involvement as “mastermind” and sponsor of the gun attack on the Atlas-Asni hotel, in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1994 This attack made three victims: two Spaniards, killed, and a Frenchwoman, seriously injured.

This imam, in an irregular situation in France, was first sentenced to death by the Moroccan courts. But France does not expel foreigners sentenced to death in their country. His sentence having been increased to 25 years’ imprisonment, France accepted the deportation.

He lived in an HLM in a district of Chartres

This information having filtered through certain Moroccan media, on October 15 and 17, the French government precipitated the expulsion procedure, which a final brake was delaying.

Abdelilah Ziad was in fact placed under judicial control, in the context of a case concerning a series of more than seventy robberies, which he is suspected of having orchestrated, in order to finance recruitment, training and organization. terrorism-related crimes. He therefore could not be expelled.

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A recent meeting of the French authorities made it possible to lift his judicial control, which required him, in particular, to check in several times a month at the Chartres police station.

The 60-year-old, who was sentenced by French justice to 8 years’ imprisonment in 1997 for his participation in the Marrakech attack, is registered in the S file (State security linked to terrorism).

Nicknamed the “Sheikh”

Abdelilah Ziad had lived for more than fifteen years in social housing, in a building in the district of La Madeleine, avenue Aristide-Briand, in Chartres.

According to our information, Wednesday, around 9 am, the police from the Chartres police station surrounded the building and took over his apartment, without any difficulty.

The suspect, who moves with the help of a cane, opened the door himself. His wife was present during the arrest. He was placed in a police vehicle and escorted by motorcyclists to the Chartres police station. He was notified of the lifting of his judicial review, as well as his placement in administrative detention and, finally, his deportation.

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With the prefectural deportation documents established, Abdelilah Ziad was transported to a Paris airport, where he boarded a commercial flight to Morocco. He was handed over to Moroccan justice to serve his sentence.

The route of this man, convicted of terrorism in two countries, is well known to the French intelligence services, and especially to Eure-et-Loir, which have been monitoring him closely for more than fifteen years.

The terrorist was arrested in Chartres and deported to Morocco

According to our information, this native of Morocco arrived in France in 1981, before being expelled, three years later, in 1984, for alleged acts in connection with terrorist activity. He would then have joined the Libyan secret services for two years. Before settling in Chartres, he would have stayed for a while, in 1986, in Carpentras (Vaucluse), then in Troyes (Aube). At the time, he apparently went under the radar of the French authorities, because he used multiple identities on his passports: Rachid, Belhaïd, Bachir, Abdelmalek, Abdellatif, Abderrahman or even Irbaiyine. He even had an Algerian passport.

He had started a family, all of whose members also bore a false identity

But he ended up being arrested. And the French justice condemned him, in 1997, for his implication in the attack of the hotel Asni. After four years of incarceration, he was released in 2001 and placed under judicial control, with the ban on appearing or residing on French territory for ten years.

According to our sources, he would have returned to France, to Chartres, discreetly, before the end of this stay ban. Abdelilah Ziad would have attended the Anousra mosque, in the old district of Beaulieu, in Chartres, renamed Les Clos.

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Nicknamed the “Sheikh”, he traveled regularly with one to four bodyguards, depending on where he went. If he was not considered likely to take action by committing himself, for example, a terrorist act, it seems, on the other hand, according to our sources, that he would have a strong capacity to switch young people in radicalization.

According to a judicial source, he could be at the origin of movements at the head of the mosques of Chartres and Lucé, during his fifteen years spent in Chartres.

He would have worked for the Libyan secret service

The sixty-year-old would have acted, since 1993, as a recruiter of young Moroccans, on behalf of the Moroccan Islamic Youth Movement (MJIM), a group opposed to the Moroccan regime, to Islamist ideology. He would also have made several suspicious trips to Migennes (Yonne).

His life in Eure-et-Loir, in Chartres, therefore ended on Wednesday.

Contacted Thursday, October 28, the prefecture of Eure-et-Loir and the police station of Chartres refused to comment on this file.