Farid Kharkhach is emotional. He is crying and this is not the first time that this 39-year-old defendant at the trial of the November 13 attacks has let his emotions flow in the box. I want to make my public apologies to my wife. I alone am responsible for dragging her into this story.
, he lets go before sitting down in tears. His wife has just been questioned for an hour and a half by videoconference. She is a witness in Paris but will be tried in Belgium for having participated, even if very occasionally, in providing false papers to terrorists.
Farid Kharkhach, he faces twenty years of criminal imprisonment for having allowed the terrorists to acquire these false identity cards.
How many fake papers did he provide?
Farid Kharkhach is nothing radicalized. Everyone around him says so. His level regarding religion is close to zero. And he’s not interested in politics
assured his brother during his hearings before the Belgian judge. He is really afraid of any problem, any conflict
, completed his wife at the hearing. Who, a few minutes earlier, had sincerely regret having participated in this
she and her husband, without knowing
.
Yes, but now, Farid Kharkhach is indeed accused of having provided false papers to the terrorist cell. The latter does not dispute this point. He rather disputes the number of documents provided and repeats over and over again that he was unaware of the intentions of the terrorist with whom he had contact, Khalid El Bakraoui, one of the organizers of the attacks in Paris and Brussels, with his brother Ibrahim .
Last week, Belgian investigators recalled that eighteen false identity cards, ordered by the terrorist cell, had been found, fourteen of which came from a sector called Catalog, dismantled in October 2015. But Farid Kharkhach’s lawyers had managed to make the police admit that they were only certain that the latter had only served as an intermediary for three or four of them, made in September 2015.
“I have problems with dates”
No more ? The president of the assize court, Jean-Louis Périès, wonders when the accused met Khalid El Bakraoui for the first time. However, like the accused questioned Thursday, Ali El Haddad Asufi, Farid Kharkhach has a failing memory. He well remembers having met him four times, the last time at the end of December 2015. But for the rest… The president insists. Between two meetings, how much time elapsed? A week, two, a month? Was he going to Morocco in the meantime, where he often stayed? Frankly, I can’t tell you. The dates, me… I know I’ve seen it four times
repeats the person concerned.
The President continues. Wouldn’t he have also provided the first false identity card found by the investigators, established on December 6, 2014 and bearing the name of Castillo (it will be used by the accused Mohamed Bakkali)? It seems to me that a while ago you admitted it…”, notes the magistrate.
But no, frankly
he does not remember. I have a problem with the dates
he apologizes.
“I want to slap myself”
But not only. You hold some kind of record in this folder which is the number of different versions
, pointed out to him one of the general counsel, Nicolas Braconnay. The accused agrees. He puts it down to the medications he has to take, including antidepressants. But also the conditions in which he was interrogated by Belgian police officers whom he describes as ventriloques
. In other words, they would have blown the answers to him. One of her lawyers, Me Fanny Vial, also points out that her client of Moroccan origin, who spoke French poorly at the time, did not benefit from the presence of an interpreter
.
What is certain is that today he blames himself. I want to slap myself
, he blurts out. All this for a few hundred euros. Depending on the quality of the papers he resold – an illegal activity he had been practicing since 2013 – he received a commission of between one hundred and one thousand two hundred euros. For the false identity cards of the terrorists, he received only one hundred euros. Do you think I would have participated in such a massacre, such a disgusting thing, for a hundred euros? No way
he protests.
The hearing will resume on Tuesday with the hearing of Salah Abdeslam.
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