Almost eight years after the jihadist attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and on a supermarket in Paris, Ali Riza Polat was this Thursday sentenced on appeal to the maximum sentence, life imprisonment, for complicity in the crimes.
Initially, in December 2020, Polat, who had always denied being a “terrorist”, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The special decision of the Paris Court of Appeal increased the sentence, following the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which asked him to “protect” society from a man of “extreme danger” and “send a clear message” to those who would feel “tempted to help a terrorist”.
The judges set a minimum term of 20 years to serve the sentence.
After six weeks of trial and more than nine hours of deliberation, Ali Riza Polat, a 37-year-old Franco-Turkish man, stood up after the verdict and pretended to leave the chair before sitting down again.
The last time he spoke in court, Ali Riza Polat pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
“I never woke up one morning to destroy the lives of these people”said the accused of complicity in the crimes committed by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly.
Polat was a close friend of Jewish supermarket killer Amedy Coulibaly and only admitted to picking up a bag of weapons in the summer of 2014, saying he was intended for a “robbery.”
“If I had supplied the weapons, I would have taken over”he said.
Before the prosecution, this “right-hand man” and “ideal accomplice” of Amedy Coulibaly, with whom he grew up in Grigny (Essonne), “was the basis of the preparations for these monstrous deaths”.
He “decisively assisted the terrorists,” who had acted in concert on January 7, 8 and 9, 2015, and “with full knowledge of the facts” of their plans, Attorney General Manon Brignol said.
“The nature of these weapons can only indicate a clear desire for violent action”emphasized the chairman of the jury, Jean-Christophe Hullin, in his deliberation.
The court also sentenced another friend of Amedy Coulibaly, 41-year-old Amar Ramdani, to 13 years in prison for supplying weapons to the Jewish supermarket killer.
The Public Prosecution Service had requested confirmation of the maximum sentence of twenty years pronounced in first instance for a terrorist criminal organization pronounced in first instance.
He “has been convicted of terrorism, which he has always denied and continued to deny when the sentence was handed down”said one of his lawyers, Yves Leberquier, emphasizing the “extremely mixed feelings” of his defense, who had asked for an acquittal.
During three days of terror, brothers Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly killed 17 people, including cartoonists Cabu and Wolinski, and culminated in their own deaths in a police raid.
These actions marked the start of a series of terrorist attacks in France, including those on November 13, 2015, whose trial ended in June, and the one on the Promenade des Anglais, in Nice, on July 14, 2016, which is currently on trial. the same court.
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Source: DN
