Trial Opens in France over Killing of Police Couple in Name of ISIS

FILE - French police officers work at the crime scene the day the attacker killed the couple in Magnanville, west of Paris, France, on June 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
FILE - French police officers work at the crime scene the day the attacker killed the couple in Magnanville, west of Paris, France, on June 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
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Trial Opens in France over Killing of Police Couple in Name of ISIS

FILE - French police officers work at the crime scene the day the attacker killed the couple in Magnanville, west of Paris, France, on June 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
FILE - French police officers work at the crime scene the day the attacker killed the couple in Magnanville, west of Paris, France, on June 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

It wasn’t the deadliest attack in Europe linked to ISIS, but it was among the most disturbing: One evening in 2016, an assailant killed two police officers in their family home, in front of their 3-year-old son.

On Monday, a trial opens in a French counterterrorism court over the attack in the Paris suburb of Magnanville.

The attacker, Larossi Abballa, was shot to death by police. According to court documents, he told police negotiators that he was responding to an ISIS leader’s call to "kill miscreants at home with their families."

A childhood friend of Abballa’s, Mohamed Aberouz, is going on trial for complicity to terrorism-related murder, complicity to kidnapping and terrorist conspiracy. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

The killings came amid a wave of attacks in France linked to ISIS and had a lasting effect on police officers around France. Some moved, changed services or resigned to protect their loved ones after the Magnanville killings.

According to court documents, Abballa broke into the home of police officers Jessica Schneider and Jean-Baptiste Salvaing before they returned from work. When Schneider came home, Abballa slit her throat in the living room, with the child present.

The father texted her from the office to say “I’m leaving,” the documents say. There was no response. He was stabbed upon arriving home.

Neighbors called police, and the attacker said he was holding the couple’s 3-year-old hostage, according to the documents. He told a negotiator from a special police unit that he acted because the French government was preventing the faithful from joining the “caliphate,” and stressed that he had not targeted civilians but representatives of the French state.

Police stormed the home and killed Abballa, and rescued the child, The Associated Press said. The boy has been raised by family members since.

After more than five years of investigation and multiple arrests, only Aberouz is facing trial. Charges were initially brought against two others but later dropped.

Aberouz, now 30, was arrested a year after the events, when his DNA was found on the victims’ computer.

Aberouz initially disputed connections to ISIS, before acknowledging that the group corresponded to his convictions but saying he deplored its extremist methods, according to the court documents.

Aberouz was already sentenced to prison in another terrorism case, for his role in a failed gas canister attack near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

In the Magnanville attack, Aberouz maintains that he never went to the police couple's home or helped in preparing the attack. He said the DNA found in the victims’ home could have been the result of his shaking hands with Abballa or riding in his car in the days before the attack.

Aberouz’ lawyer Vincent Brengarth said he would plead for acquittal. “My client is determined to prove his innocence,” he told AP. “There is no message in which he talks about an attack.”

Police are hoping that the trial sheds light on the preparations for the attack.

A verdict is expected Oct. 10.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."