Algerian Saber Lahmar, who was imprisoned in Guantanamo for eight years, acquitted and brought to France in 2009, is on trial in Paris from Tuesday to Friday on suspicion of preaching radical sermons and inciting jihadi aspirants to leave for Iraq or Syria. He is accompanied by another accused, Mohamed H., with whom he is facing trial for terrorist criminal organisation, in the 2nd Chamber of the Paris Criminal Court.
He then went to Medina in Saudi Arabia for a few years to complete his studies before turning up in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1996 and 2001, where he worked, among other places, in a large mosque in Sarajevo that was considered a meeting place for Islamists. The Bosnians extradited him to the Americans in early 2002, along with five other Algerians, on suspicion of masterminding an attack on the US embassy.
He is taken to the Guantanamo military prison on the island of Cuba, where he is held until 2008, before the US judiciary rules that he is innocent. President Nicolas Sarkozy agrees to the principle of accepting two former detainees of the camp in France. They are Lakhdar Boumediene and Saber Lahmar, who will be allowed to stay in France on December 1, 2009.
(…) According to the indictment, the man who apparently acted as a “religious leader” soon acted as an imam in the mosque of Saint-André-de-Cubzac (Gironde), but also in a secret prayer room above the restaurant of Mohamed H., the other accused. Saber Lahmar is accused of being “entrenched in radical Islam” making “very violent statements” during sermons in which he “attacked Jews, called for the killing of apostates and martyrdom”. It is suspected that he had links to several figures of jihadism in France. The starting point of the investigation was that Saber Lahmar was said to have “directly promoted and prepared” “departures” “to the Iraqi-Syrian area” in the summer of 2015. (…) Sud-Ouest