Two counter-terrorism judges transferred him on February 17 on charges of criminal “terrorist organisation”, according to a decision obtained by AFP.
The trial will take place in Paris from May 10 to 13, a judicial source reported.
The 53-year-old Algerian-born man is believed by the judiciary to be a former member of the Algerian Groupe islamique armé (GIA) who later crossed Saudi Arabia and Bosnia.
He was suspected of carrying out an attack on the US embassy in Sarajevo and was detained at the US Guantanamo camp in Cuba in early 2002.
He was released by the US in late 2009 and transferred to France, where he had settled near Bordeaux and was working as an imam in a mosque and an illegal prayer room.
Saber Lahmar is accused of being ” involved in radical Islam “, which he denies, making ” very violent statements ” in sermons ” in which he attacked Jews, called for the killing of apostates and martyrdom “.
He is suspected of having maintained links with several jihadist personalities in France.
Saber Lahmar is also accused of “directly encouraging and preparing” the departure in the summer of 2015 of a man, Othman Yekhlef, who has been considered ” killed in the region ” since the end of 2015, and of a couple and their four children towards ” the Iraqi-Syrian zone “.
The father, Salim Machou, is among the seven Frenchmen sentenced to death by the Iraqi judiciary in 2019 for their membership of the Islamic State (IS) group.
The judiciary is also investigating whether Saber Lahmar was “paid” 35,000 euros for his activity on these exits by the Sanabil association, which was dismantled by the French authorities at the end of 2016 because they had attributed it to the jihadist haze.
Lawyers for Saber Lahmar, who was charged and detained in June 2017, did not respond to an AFP query.
A trial has also been ordered for the man the judiciary considers his “second in command”, Mohamed H., born in Morocco in 1977. The latter “strongly denies the charges against him”, according to his lawyer Noémie Saidi-Cottier. La Presse.ca