At the trial of the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray attack, the enigma of a quick trip

The young man stands very straight in the box, wearing a white sweater. Her curly black hair falls over her eyes. He often abbreviates the sentences where he has the feeling of repeating himself by «Nanani nanana» which annoy the president of the assize court. His voice is clear, marked by the accent of Toulouse, the city where he was born in August 1994.

→ STORY. At the trial of the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray attack, the fate of three defendants

From Toulouse to Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray is quite a long journey. Yassine Sebaihia made the trip on Sunday July 24, 2016. He did it the other way the next day, Monday July 25. During the night he spent in this city in the suburbs of Rouen, Yassine Sebaihia met Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, the two 19-year-olds who, the next day, Tuesday July 26, will storm the Saint-Étienne church, killing Father Jacques Hamel, seriously injuring Guy Coponet.

“religious classes”

Why does a kid leave 800 km from home to come back the next day? Yassine Sebaihia kept repeating the same version throughout the investigation. So idle, largely desocialized, he suffered reproaches from his mother and his girlfriend. “Nothing was going well in my life. I played ten hours a day on my console. » To get out of his isolation, he seizes the proposal made to him by Adel Kermiche, a contact he met on the Telegram network: to join a group of young people for religion lessons in a mosque.

Arriving in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, he became disillusioned. The one who received him, Abdel-Malik Petitjean, quickly reproached him. “For him, everything is serious religiously. My way of praying, listening to music, having a girlfriend. » They spend part of the night in a park before reaching the house of the Kermiche family around 2 o’clock in the morning. “They offered me to sleep in a tent. It doesn’t happen! I felt like I was rejected. I got stuck, they got stuck. » Finally, Sebaihia falls asleep on the couch. Early the next morning, he leaves for Toulouse.

“At the time, Daesh was of interest to everyone. »

For the prosecution, this version does not hold. Sebaihia frequented jihadist sites before his departure. The texts published by Kermiche on Telegram were apologies for terrorism, nothing that allows us to see him as a nice organizer of summer sessions for young Muslims. Sebaihia must have heard the other two talk about their planned attack. His departure on Monday morning may be explained by a mission entrusted to him. In fact, in a telephone conversation, he makes enigmatic remarks that day, speaking of papers that he must recover. In view of a passage in Syria?

→ STORY. At the trial of the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray attack, the paths of radicalization

Sebaihia admits having frequented violent Islamist sites. “At the time, Daesh was of interest to everyone. » But he stresses that he did not respond to messages and that he did not conceal his identity. He admits a fascination for Kermiche. “I wanted to speak like him, look like him. » Often he says: ” I did not think. » And notice: “Afterwards, I said to myself that I had done something dangerous. » The problem is that when he returned to Toulouse, he didn’t tell anyone.

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