Nice Basilica Trial: Terrorist Sentenced to Life for “Unbearable Cruelty”

In a solemn voice, the president of the special assize court of Paris delivered his verdict, Wednesday at the end of the day. Found guilty of "murders and attempted murders in connection with a terrorist enterprise" on October 29, 2020 in the basilica of Nice, Brahim Aouissaoui was sentenced to life imprisonment with an irreducible security period, i.e. real life. A decision faithful to the demands of the public prosecutor, who had requested in the morning the maximum sentence against this terrorist with "unbearable cruelty and unwavering determination" . Exceptionally, the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, was present for the closing of the trial of the second attack to have mourned his city.

In the dock, the young man with dreadlocks and a beard appeared agitated throughout the day. Far from expressing regret for having fatally stabbed parishioner Nadine Devillers, sacristan Vincent Loquès and mother Simone Barreto Silva, he once again stressed the fate of "the women and children [Muslims, editor's note] who died" , executed, according to him, by Westerners. "Every day, you kill Muslims and you don't care (...) The West blindly kills" "innocent" Muslims, "revenge" is "a right and a truth" , he had already proclaimed on Monday during his questioning by the court .

"More than acknowledging the facts, he claims them," stressed the attorneys general of the national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office during their requisitions. This reveals the extent to which he is still inhabited by his radical ideology." In a two-voice demonstration, they insisted on the fact that "Brahim Aouissaoui's destructive fanaticism has remained intact four and a half years after the events (...) Throughout the hearing, we were able to see the darkness and hatred in his eyes. He has locked himself in a deadly matrix, blinded by obscurantism and by hatred of France."

The assailant's defense, provided by ^Mr. Martin Méchin and Mr. Marie-Alexandrine Bardinet, acknowledged the requested sentence: "we did not expect anything else. The guilt is established, the facts are recognized, almost claimed, and these are the most serious facts that one can imagine," argued ^Mr. Méchin. He nevertheless asked the president, Christophe Petiteau, to "show courage: real life imprisonment is a euphemized death penalty, the death penalty of hypocrites."

While his client had refused, throughout the investigation, to comment on the crimes he was accused of, the criminal lawyer highlighted his change of position during the trial. "He justified his actions by the law of retaliation. An explanation that may be untenable, but he delivered his truth and that is his right," the lawyer recalled. Concerning the preparation of his terrorist plan and the choice of targets, the accused remained entrenched in a perpetual: "I don't remember."

For the defense, the assailant has walled himself "in an ideological loop that he convinces himself transcends and overwhelms him. Because he himself does not understand how he could have killed people in such a horrible way, how the killing could have been so savage. To admit it would be too destructive for him and would cause his psychological collapse. The claim allows him to explain the action, but he cannot go further."

^Ms Marie-Alexandrine Bardinet set about demonstrating that there was no evidence that her client had left Tunisia for France with the sole purpose of committing an attack. "His criminal plan took shape once he was in France, in this migratory uprooting. The evidence in the case suggests a hasty rather than carefully prepared act," she argued.

Earlier in the day, the attorneys general had on the contrary stressed that his clandestine entry into France on October 27, 2020, was part of the "explosive context of the republication of the caricatures of Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo" and the assassination of Samuel Paty , thirteen days before the attack on the basilica. The public prosecutor sees this as the motivations of a man radicalized since 2018 and whose social environment in Tunisia had gradually been restricted to Salafists implicated in local terrorist cases.

"His hatred of France materialized in a visceral hatred that he fed by watching preachers preach. This hatred was the driving force behind his actions," argued the prosecution. Two days earlier, when ^Mr. Martin Méchin pointed out to him that "the people around [him] were afraid of [him]," Brahim Aouissaoui himself admitted, chillingly: "They are right to take precautions."