“THE STATE SERVICES HAVE FAILED”
The court now gives the floor to Me Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, lawyer for the main accused, Ali Riza Polat.
In this trial, the heaviest charges fall on Ali Riza Polat and Mohamed Belhoucine, both prosecuted for “complicity” in terrorist crimes and facing life imprisonment. Only Ali Riza Polat, a 35-year-old Franco-Turk, is in the box, Mohamed Belhoucine being the subject of an arrest warrant. In detention since March 2015, Ali Riza Polat, who had met Amédy Coulibaly in a city of Grigny (Essonne), appears “at all stages of the preparation” of the attacks, according to the anti-terrorism judges. He is particularly suspected of having helped Coulibaly to obtain the arsenal used in the attacks of Hyper Cacher and Montrouge, but also that of Charlie Hebdo, committed by the Kouachi brothers.
Ali Riza Polat’s lawyer, Me Coutant-Peyre, presents her conclusions. In particular, it disputes that the trial takes place at the Porte de Clichy judicial court and not on the Ile de la Cité as it should be the case for this type of trial. “I could not admit that justice is variable geometry,” said the lawyer.
“What happened is irreparable. But it could have been avoided if the intelligence services had been serious. All that would not have happened”, declares the lawyer referring on several occasions to the “Chouaki brothers” (sic ) and “Amédy Coulibaly”.
“I sympathize with all this suffering, the suffering of all these victims,” she adds.
According to the lawyer, “the state services have failed”. “The victims want real justice, it means seeking the truth. It is not revenge justice, it is truth justice,” she continues.
“I request additional information for the purposes of indicting the suppliers of these weapons as complicity, because the arms suppliers, who are known, are not in this trial.”
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