The acquittal of the jihadist “prison front” annulled for the second time

2023-06-29 20:29:56

The trial of the jihadist “prison front” will have to be held again. The Appeals Chamber of the National Court has annulled for the second time the sentence that acquitted those accused of being part of a terrorist group in prisons to spread the postulates of Daesh and has once again ordered that the trial be repeated with a different court .

In October last year, the Fourth Section of the Criminal Chamber acquitted all the defendants for the first time, including the alleged leader of the plot, Abderrahmanen Tahiri, known as Mohamed Achraf, but the Prosecutor’s Office appealed the sentence and the Appeals Chamber annulled the ruling and urged the court to redraft it when appreciating contradictions between the proven facts and their legal classification.

Last March, the new sentence was announced, which again acquitted the five defendants.

The Prosecutor’s Office -backed by the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT) and the Association of 11M Affected by Terrorism- again appealed the acquittal of Mohamed Achraf, Mohamed el Gharbi, Karim Abdeselam Mohamed and Abdelah Abdeselam Ahmed for the crimes of constituting a terrorist group , collaboration and recruitment and terrorist indoctrination through letters sent to other inmates (regarding the fifth defendant, Lahcen Zamzami, the charge had been withdrawn at trial).

The Public Ministry complained that the court did not consider it as proven that the defendants “favored the actions of the terrorist organization Daesh among third parties” and instructed Muslim prisoners “in extremist ideas, favoring the purposes of that organization, by helping them win adepts” supposes a “notable contradiction” with the facts that the ruling considers proven, for which reason it requested its annulment and the repetition of the oral hearing with different magistrates.

“Clear inconsistency”

The Appeals Chamber shares these arguments and insists that the resolution suffers from “insufficiency, irrationality and clear incoherence” in the account of proven facts and criticizes that the argumentative development of the ruling incurs “in illogical bankruptcies of such magnitude that the conclusions reached do not may be considered based on none of the reasons given”.

All this, the Chamber concludes, violates the right of the accusations to obtain “a reasoned response that responds to their right to effective judicial protection”, for which reason the sentence is annulled except in relation to the acquittal of Lahcen Zamzami.

The magistrates recall that in the proven facts, the court indicated that these letters sent by the defendants from prison “did not imply an intention to favor the actions of the terrorist organization Daesh, nor encourage other inmates to learn about or disseminate ideology that would promote the future practice of terrorist actions”. Neither did they see these behaviors as indicative of their sharing the “violent and intimidating strategy of the aforementioned terrorist group” nor did they appreciate an intention to achieve in the recipients “a process of progressive radicalization” to keep in them “latent” the terrorist commitment, “commit acts of favoring that terrorist organization once they were released or gain followers” for Daesh.

But these conclusions, the Chamber emphasizes, do not fit into the actions attributed to them in the sentence, such as “the repeated and constant use by the defendants of the anagrams and expressions of the Daesh propaganda apparatus, which they disseminate among prisoners both for common crimes such as terrorism”. Or the “constant work of issuing and receiving letters – mostly by clandestine methods through unofficial circuits, far from the control of the penitentiary center where they were inmates – with calls, slogans, slogans, flags, nasheeds, religious texts with radical and other propaganda slogans that coincide with those of that terrorist organization”. And the fact that in them they reiterated Daesh’s argument “to appear as victims of the groups against which they have usually been attacking.”

Cleared of planning to attack the Audiencia

In October of last year, he did not see sufficient evidence to convict Mohamed Achraf (who was already acquitted in 2018 of a crime of conspiracy to attack the Court by driving a truck loaded with explosives into its headquarters), Mohamed El Gharbi, Karim Abdeselam Mohamed and Abdelah Abdeselam Ahmed for the crimes of constituting a terrorist group or, where appropriate, collaboration with a terrorist organization, and recruitment and terrorist indoctrination.

For the magistrates, it could not be proven that they carried out any action “focused on terrorist conduct by their interlocutor or by themselves, despite the vehemence of many of the religious texts they sent and received, and even despite of the drawings of flags and the expression of slogans used by militants and sympathizers of Daesh”.

The defendants carried out this activity in various prisons between 2015 and 2019, carrying out “intense work issuing and receiving letters, many of them through unofficial circuits, far from the control exercised by prisons over their correspondence.”

“A Stream of Mutual Support”

For the Chamber, they limited themselves to establishing a “current of mutual support” among themselves to “better cope with life in prison and avoid falling into the despair of believing that their lives were ending in prison.”

The Civil Guard pointed to Mohamed Achraf as the “promoter and promoter” of the supposed jihadist network in prisons and warned that the defendants had strengthened their “direct links” from prison with members of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Martyrs of Morocco.

Mohamed Achraf was sentenced in 2008 to 14 years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization in the rank of leader for leading a group of prisoners from the Topas prison (Salamanca) whom he indoctrinated into jihad, a sentence that was later ratified by the Supreme Court, which nevertheless acquitted 14 of the twenty convicted in that trial.

In his letters, Mohamed Achraf rejoiced at Daesh’s victories, which as he stated “satisfy our hatred, calm our cravings and make the hatred disappear from our hearts with the defeat of the infidels”.