The testimony of a courageous woman who no longer exists
On Friday the Paris special criminal court, where those suspected of complicity in the November 2015 terrorist attacks are being tried, heard evidence from a remarkable woman who saved many lives, at the cost of her own identity.
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A blurred image on a screen, an electronically falsified voice, a name which is not her own. That's all that remains of the woman who, on 16 November 2015, contacted the police to say she knew where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, terrace murderer and coordinator of the Paris attacks, was hiding.
She told the authorities they had to act quickly, because Abaaoud was planning another terrorist atrocity.
Hours later, the terrorist leader and another Paris killer, Chakib Akrouh, were dead. The woman who had so crucially helped the police was on her way to a new life with a new identity under the witness protection scheme.
"This has cost us a lot, me, my children, my partner . . . we get up, we get through the day, we go asleep . . . there are good times and bad times . . . I no longer trust anybody . . . I'm another victim of 13 November, but I refuse that classification, I don't have the right. I lost no one . . . it has cost a lot. But if it had to be done again, I'd do it again."
The court president Jean-Louis Périès said "I salute your courageous action. You saved a lot of lives."
There was a ripple of applause from the public benches in the vast courtroom.
"No!" said the president, raising a hand, "this is not the place." But he said it with a smile. If ever Jean-Louis Périès was tempted to sacrifice procedural solemnity to public enthusiasm, this was the moment.
Thirty-nine dead in 12 minutes
Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh were two of the three attackers who murdered 39 people in less than twelve minutes on 13 November 2015, machine-gunning the customers in a succession of central Parisian bars and restaurants.
The third man, Brahim Abdeslam, blew himself up on the covered terrace of the Comptoir Voltaire cafΓ©.Β Abaaoud and Akrouh vanished.
Abaaoud contacted his Paris-based cousin, Hasna AΓ―t Boulhacen, asking her if she could find a place for him to hide for a few days. Boulhacen, a deeply troubled individual with a history of problems with drink and drugs was, at that time, staying with Friday's witness.
Boulhacen was unable to cope alone. She asked the witness for help, explaining that she needed to find temporary lodgings for someone she described as "a 17-year-old cousin".
The witness, her partner, Boulhacen and Abaaoud thus met in the north Paris suburb of Aubervilliers, where Abaaoud and Akrouh had been hiding in bushes on a motorway embankment.
Initially distrustful, Abaaoud threatened the witness and her partner with a handgun, before accepting their presence. It was agreed that Boulhacen would collect money sent from Brussels for Abaaoud, and try to find a place for him to rest for 48 hours.
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They were warned to say nothing about the meeting, or they would be killed.
After that encounter, the partner asked the witness if the man they had met was Salah Abdeslam, another of the fleeing attackers. "No," she replied, "it's worse than that. He's the leader."
The witness remembered Abaaoud's "cold and empty" look as he told them that he had been one of the terrace killers.
"I called him an assassin. I said he had killed innocent people. He told me I was a failed Muslim."
Danger of a bloody sequel
One of Boulhacen's drug suppliers put her in contact with a black market landlord who had an apartment free in the Paris area of Saint-Denis. Abaaoud and Akrouh took refuge there.
It rapidly became clear that Abaaoud had other plans. At one stage he said "I have to finish what I came here to do."
He and Akrouh still had weapons and explosives. They planned to attack either the main Paris airport at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, or the shopping centre and police station at La DΓ©fence, the business quarter of the French capital.
The witness rang the confidential police number and told them what she knew.
Officers were initially sceptical when told that the most wanted man in Europe was hiding under a bush in Aubervilliers. But the witness rapidly convinced them with details which had not, at that stage, been made public. She mentioned Abaaoud's orange sneakers, already noted by investigators who were tracking the fleeing killer using footage from security cameras.
The witness subsequently obtained and passed on the precise address and the entry code for the building in which the two fugitives were hiding. But she warned the police that it was possible there were other terrorists, perhaps many others, at the same location.
Shortly afterwards, at 4.15 on the morning of 17 November 2015, police special units deployed on rue du Corbillon in Saint-Denis and, following a fierce battle which lasted nearly eight hours, killed Abaaoud, Akrouh and Boulhacen in an operation which virtually destroyed the dilapidated building.
Less than 100 hours had elapsed since the Paris massacres. The French capital had been spared a bloody sequel.
The trial continues.
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