The last member on the run of the “Roubaix gang”, Seddik Benbahlouli, sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison in 2001 and recently arrested in the United States, was handed over to the French authorities on Friday and imprisoned, announced the Douai general prosecutor’s office in a press release.
This 53-year-old man “will be judged by the Northern Assize Court for the facts which justified his conviction in absentia, (…) unless he expresses his acquiescence to this conviction within one month”, it is specified in the press release.
On the run for a quarter of a century, Seddik Benbahlouli was convicted in 2001 for acts committed in 1995 and 1996, in particular “attempted murders against persons holding public authority” and “criminal association with a view to preparing crimes of armed robbery.”
He was arrested in the United States for violating the legislation on foreigners, while he was traveling under a false identity, according to a police source. “Administratively expelled from the United States and handed over to the French authorities because of his nationality”, he landed at Roissy airport on Friday, according to the general prosecutor’s office.
All members had been shot or convicted
The “Roubaix gang” was initially formed around a core group attending the Daawa mosque in Roubaix in the 1990s. Nine of the ten members had gone to Bosnia, alongside Arab and Afghan Islamists who had come fight with the Bosnian army.
The idea of setting up a group in France and organizing robberies to finance the Islamist cause was born in 1995. Armed attack on a Brink’s van, robbery of a supermarket: at the beginning of 1996, the group carried out several weapon attacks in the Lille metropolis, a shooting leaving one dead in Roubaix.
On March 28, a car bomb attack parked in front of the old police station was narrowly avoided, a few days before a G7 meeting in Lille. The day after this failed attack, on March 29, 1996, the Raid attacked a group hideout in Roubaix.
Of the ten members of the “gang”, four were killed during the assault, one was killed the next day and three were arrested then sentenced to heavy prison terms in 2001. Lionel Dumont, arrested in 2003 in Germany after a runaway of almost eight years, was sentenced in 2007 to 25 years of criminal imprisonment, and placed on an electronic bracelet at the end of 2022.
Only Seddik Benbahlouli had never been found until then.
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