Did Saber Lahmar incite Muslim believers to go to jihad for Daesh, or not? This is the question that the Paris criminal court will have to decide from May 10 to 13, as Sud-Ouest reports. The imam from Bordeaux is charged with organising a “terrorist criminal organisation” and is said to have assisted in the departure of several Islamists to the Middle East. In particular, of a family that had left for Iraq via Greece in the summer of 2015. The issue for the judiciary is: How much was the accused preacher actually involved in the departure to Islamic State-controlled areas? His lawyer answers that his client never called for “hijra”, emigration to an Islamic country, which is the duty of every good Muslim according to Sharia law. While there are no records to prove such statements, Saber Lahmar’s sermons were very radicalised. It could be a hidden call to jihad.
Saber Lahmar has had a special background. He was a member of the GIA (Groupe islamique armé, an Algerian jihadist movement responsible for numerous attacks, particularly in France) and subsequently lived in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). There he was arrested by the Americans and spent eight years in the high-security Guantanamo prison before being released for lack of evidence against him. Saber Lahmar, who came to France after his release, is said to have never broken his ties with radical Islam, having made contact with two notorious Islamists who were imprisoned: Lionel Dumont of the Roubaix gang and Mohamed Achamlane, the leader of the jihadist group Forzane Alizza.