France: Trial of the muslim knife attacker who killed 3 people in Nice in 2020, he says I am a Muslim,’ beheaded woman ‘to scare them’

[duluxe]

Third and final week of the trial of the alleged perpetrator of the knife attack that left three dead at the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice in 2020. This Monday morning, during the questioning of the accused, Brahim Aouissaoui admitted the facts, he who until then had invoked amnesia.

Brahim Aouissaoui has come out of silence and amnesia. Pressed with questions by the president of the special assize court in Paris, the alleged assailant of the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption basilica in Nice, who has been on trial for two weeks for murdering three people in a knife attack on October 29, 2020, finally admitted the facts this Monday morning.

“Yes, I admit the facts,” said the accused. “I am not a terrorist, I am a Muslim,” said Brahim Aouissaoui, justifying his act by explaining that “every day there are Muslims who die.” “Every day, you kill Muslims and you don’t care. You have no empathy for these people,” he added. “The West blindly kills” “innocent” Muslims and “taking revenge” is “a right and a truth,” he asserted.

“Of course I am responsible”
“The three victims had nothing to do with it, they were innocent. But who kills newborns, children? You, your country. You hide everything in the newspapers. Show the truth about what is happening in our country,” the accused insists in court, speaking in Arabic with the help of a translator.

The choice of his victims, killing them in a church, was “random,” he says. “Is it the right and the truth to go and kill people at random?”, the presiding judge Christophe Petiteau asks him. “Yes,” answers Brahim Aouissaoui categorically. “I had not prepared anything,” but the assassinations were “legitimate,” according to him. “It is my right, it is my justice.”

Very forthcoming when discussing his justifications, Brahim Aouissaoui is much less forthcoming when it comes to providing details on the facts themselves: the murder with a kitchen knife of parishioner Nadine Devillers, 60, sacristan Vincent Loquès, 54, and mother Simone Barreto Silva, 44. “I told you why I committed these acts, but I don’t remember how I did it,” he says to cut short questions.

He admits, however, that decapitating Nadine Devillers was “to scare people.” “To scare, to spread terror, that’s exactly what terrorism is,” the president points out to him.

“Every person is responsible for what they do and of course I am responsible,” the accused acknowledges. And this amnesia invoked? “I didn’t want to talk,” Aouissaoui replies.

Five years of “amnesia”
Since his arrest, the accused has always claimed not to remember anything, claiming total “amnesia” between his departure from Tunisia in September 2020 and the murder of three parishioners in the religious building a month later. “I don’t know”, “I don’t remember”, he simply replied, mute, during the investigation.

And then two days after the opening of the trial, Brahim Aouissaoui made a gesture on February 12, confronted with the video surveillance images taken inside the basilica on the day of the attack: “The person in the photo is me”, admitted the 25-year-old Tunisian for the first time since his arrest. But he had not confessed to being the perpetrator of the attack.

Brahim Aouissaoui’s interrogation is scheduled for the entire day. The young man is appearing until Wednesday for murder and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise. He faces life imprisonment.