“They deserve to be judged regardless of what Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel has done,” the driver of the ram truck that drove into a crowd on July 14, 2016, killing 86 and injuring more than 450, the lawyer said on Wednesday Karim Laouafi. At the trial of the Nice attack, the defenders of the five defendants tried for arms trafficking called the Paris Special Assizes Court to judge these four men and this woman “robbed” in their “right place” from a hearing which “exceeds” them.
In the absence of the assassin, who was killed by the police, eight people have been tried since 5 September. And four Albanians and a Tunisian, absent from the hearing, are present for arms trafficking and criminal association, without terrorist status.
On Tuesday, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) asked them for two to ten years in prison, describing them as links “in the chain that will contribute to the commission of the attack”. They are accused of having participated, to varying degrees, in supplying a semi-automatic pistol to another defendant, Ramzi Arefa, who will sell it to Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel on July 12, 2016.
No “separate preparatory act”
They “psychologically and materially armed the perpetrator of the attack,” the indictment estimated. The latter used the pistol against several people who were trying to stop his truck, without injuring them. “The prosecutor artificially builds bridges between crimes” which are not of the same nature, said Frédéric Nasrinfar, Artan Henaj’s lawyer, on the first day of the defense arguments. The prosecution has asked for ten years’ imprisonment for his client, the maximum sentence for arms trafficking in a group.
The 44-year-old Albanian admits to having supplied Ramzi Arefa with the pistol, as well as an assault rifle with no ammunition, the destination of which remains unknown. But, for Me Nasrinfar, he must be acquitted of the crime of “criminal association” because he did not commit “separate preparatory acts” from the supply of the two weapons.
The lawyer of Enkeledja Zace, Artan Henaj’s ex-girlfriend, ensured that her client was “far from the caricature of the prosecution” who defined her role as “essential”. According to Artan Henaj and Ramzi Arefa, you provided the translation during the transactions. The Albanian says that you worked in a bar those evenings. According to Me Joseph Hazan, who is asking the court to prevent him from being reincarcerated, the elements that incriminate him are “not very convincing”.
They wanted to “help”
Even the advisors of Maksim Celaj and Endri Elezi, for whom the Pnat has asked for three years’ imprisonment and territorial interdiction, have tried to limit their role. The two men, 24 years old at the time and having just arrived in France, admit that they went in search of the assault rifle hidden on the heights of Nice, on the instructions of a cousin of Endri Elezi, and that they transported it to Artan Henaj , cousin of Maksim Celaj.
They didn’t know what they were looking for and wanted to “do a favour” for their respective cousins to whom they felt “indebted”, their lawyers assured. “The judicial institution must take a step back from emotion,” pleaded Clémence Cottineau, Maksim Celaj’s lawyer. “I ask you for a just sentence in accordance with his person and his involvement,” asked Guillaume Gombart, one of Endri Elezi’s lawyers.
“We must not lock Brahim Tritrou in the grips of certainty”, Margot Pugliese finally wished Me, for this 37-year-old Tunisian who left “at his mother’s bedside” while under judicial surveillance and who did not return to France for “fear to be reincarcerated”. Tried for “criminal association”, for having linked Ramzi Arefa and Artan Henaj, he is detained in Tunisia, according to the authorities of this country.
Defense discussions will continue on Thursday and Friday. The verdict is expected on Tuesday 13 December.
