Sid Ahmed Ghlam sentenced to life imprisonment

Sid Ahmed Ghlam was found guilty of the assassination of Aurélie Chatelain and of the attempted assassination at the church in Villejuif in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

Sid Ahmed Ghlam was sentenced to life imprisonment. The special assize court found the Algerian student guilty of the assassination of Aurélie Chatelain and of the attempted assassination for the abortive attack at the Villejuif church in April 2015. His sentence was accompanied by a security period of 22 years, in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution, as well as a definitive ban from French territory.

Sid Ahmed Ghlam coldly shot Aurélie Chatelain, a fitness teacher, in his car in a parking lot in Villejuif, in the Paris suburbs. Sid Ahmed Ghlam’s DNA and blood traces were found in Aurélie Châtelain’s car and on the murder weapon he held. Throughout his trial, the accused denied this murder and implicated a mysterious accomplice whose presence has not been confirmed.

The regrets of the accused

While he confirmed a plan to attack a church in the name of Daesh, Sid Ahmed Ghlam, however, explained to investigators that it was only a matter of “scaring” parishioners. During the debates, he said that he had given up on this project, shocked by the death of Aurélie Châtelain, and that he had voluntarily wounded himself with a bullet (with the crime weapon) in the thigh to escape. “in retaliation” for his sponsors in Syria. An injury that had led to his arrest.

“I bitterly regret my career,” said the accused, invited to speak for the last time this Thursday before the special assize court in Paris. “I will feel guilty all my life,” added the 29-year-old.

An assassination that is not a “clumsiness”

The Advocate General insisted during his indictment on the assassination of Aurélie Chatelain to demand life imprisonment. “This trial will not return to Juliette (the daughter of the victim Aurélie Châtelain, editor’s note) her mother but it will teach her that society is governed by justice and not by violence,” said the representative of the prosecution. “We have always spoken wrongly about the failed attack in Villejuif. It is to forget that Aurélie Châtelain was assassinated this Sunday, April 19 in a parking lot in Villejuif”, she again recalled, noting that the assassination of the young woman had nothing of a “clumsiness”.

And to continue: “She was the first and fortunately the only victim of the Villejuif attack … She was 32 years old and her whole life ahead of her”.

The prosecution had also called for exemplary sentences against the two other defendants, considered to be “logisticians” who had supplied weapons and equipment to Sid Ahmed Ghlam. The Advocate General had thus requested 30 years of imprisonment, including a two-thirds security period against Rabah Boukaouma and 25 years of imprisonment (including two-thirds of security) against Farid Brahami.