#Crif - Press release after Toulouse-Montauban trial verdict

November 2, 2017

Abdelkader Merah* was sentenced to 20 years in prison for criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise

Crif takes note of the verdict of the Court. This eagerly awaited trial was held in accordance with our judicial system and the laws of our country. Justice has passed. It held the convict responsible for criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise. It did not however retain the complicity of murder.

This ideologue of the assassin of the soldiers Abel Chennouf, Mohamed Legouad and Imad Ibn Ziaten, and then of Jonathan, Arieh and Gavriel Sandler and Myriam Monsonego is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, the maximum penalty for the facts retained.

For Francis Kalifat, President of the Crif, "Abdelkader Merah remains totally guilty in view of the pain of families and the horror of the crime committed by his brother; he had radicalized and instrumented and whom he made the armed arm of his mortifying ideology. Francis Kalifat regrets that the justice has not gone to the end while the elements of the file justified it, and he fears that Islamist terrorists may see this verdict as a sign of weakness.

Justice is almost done. This trial made it possible to understand how hate is shaped in France and should encourage us to be vigilant at all times.