When Daesh’s hostages discover their jailers | EUROtoday

Che Monday within the Voltaire room of the Palais de Justice de la Île de la Cité in Paris, Nicolas Hénin, Pierre Torres, Didier François and Édouard Elias have an odd assembly with their previous. The 4 journalists, hostages of Daesh between spring 2013 and spring 2014, will discover Mehdi Nemmouche, this younger Frenchman who was their jailer and their torturer. For the 4 victims, as for Nemmouche, it’s to start with an odd flashback that might be performed. It was yesterday, it was a century in the past. It was ten years in the past. Daesh was then on the peak of his glory and his energy. The terrorist group managed half of the Syrian territory and virtually 1 / 4 of Iraq, in addition to the second metropolis within the nation, Mossoul.

Terrible closed door

This trial ought to make it attainable to hint the group of Daesh, the networks of younger European jihadists who dreamed of the caliphate, their motivations, the beginnings of the 2015 assaults, and so forth. But within the background, two males will primarily return to a dialogue began within the pediatric hospital in Raqqa ten years earlier. And relive a horrible closed door, that of a jailer and its hostage, a executioner and his sufferer.

Back again. We are in May 2014. Daesh hostage in Syria for ten months, Nicolas Hénin, particular envoy of Point In Syria, has simply been launched. He discovered his family members, and particularly his two younger youngsters and his associate. He tries to rebuild himself with dignity. Especially with braveness. It takes to discover a “normal” life when a number of of his fellow prisoners are, one after the opposite, murdered by the jihadists (out of the 27 Western hostages of Daesh, 8 had been executed, 3 have disappeared, all had been tortured) . Starting with the American journalist James Foley, his good friend, slaughtered in his orange outfit in entrance of a digicam. Guilt to be outdoors when his unlucky brothers are nonetheless within the anteroom of dying. Anger towards his kidnappers, their periods of free, virtually infantile torture. Modesty to not put your self ahead. Refusal to put in writing a ebook on his detention because the others haven’t returned. And that they are going to by no means come again.

Almighty Daesh

At the time, Daesh was extra highly effective than ever and exports his lethal insanity all around the world. In European capitals, we tremble. The intelligence companies have no idea the place or when, however they’re already certain: assaults are ready (these of the terraces and the Bataclan will happen eighteen months later). This day in May 2014, a month after his launch, Nicolas Hénin subsequently found frightened, in entrance of his tv, the face of a younger Frenchman whose cruelty he is aware of. Mehdi Nemmouche was arrested. He has simply dedicated an assault towards the Jewish Museum in Brussels. And if Hénin acknowledges it so properly and with out hesitation, it’s as a result of earlier than the killing in Belgium (4 folks misplaced their lives), Nemmouche was his jailer and his torturer.

Nicolas Hénin then takes the pen in our columns. His story, “Nemmouche and me”, is chilling. Extracts: Nemmouche is “a character ultimately not so politicized, and curiously without any religious reference – I have never heard him once to pronounce the name of Allah, which God knows how much the practicing Muslims invoke him to Hand tour. Not very hallal, either, his songs in the corridor of cells: “Sweet France, dear country of my childhood…” resonated regularly, sounding false and incongruous, in the corridor of cells. When Nemmouche did not sing, he tortured. He was a member of a small group of French people whose arrival terrorized the fifty Syrian prisoners held in neighboring cells. Each evening, the blows began to rain in the room in which I myself was questioned. Torture lasted all night, until the prayer of dawn. To the howls of the prisoners sometimes responded to glazing in French. »»

It is such a pleasure to cut a baby’s head …Mehdi Nemmouche, extract from “Nemmouche and me” by Nicolas Hénin

Another extract from Nicolas Hénin’s text. This time, it is Nemmouche who is expressed: “Do you know the way it goes once I get right into a Shiite home?” He had arrested one day. First, I come across the grandmother. She is not very interesting, the grandmother. I only get rid of it, it is not worth more. Afterwards, I see the woman. There it is starting to become more fun. First, I violate her, and then I cut her throat. After that, I have a hollow, so I’m going to the fridge, see what I find there to fill my stomach. Afterwards, I come across the baby. Ah, a baby! You can’t know, it’s such a pleasure to cut a baby’s head … “

Humanity towards cruelty

To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

Answer

Somewhat over ten years later, this Monday, February 17, Nicolas Hénin finds Mehdi Nemmouche. This time, it’s now not in Raqqa, the “capital” of the Caliphate in Syria. But on the courthouse, on the island of town the place Nemmouche and his accomplices are tried for kidnapping and forcible confinement. But there isn’t a query of reverse the roles. Hénin has no need to be the jail of Nemmouche. Without excusing something from the excesses and the cruelty of his executioner, the journalist has by no means ceased to consider in legislation, to justice. In humanity.

For ten years, Nicolas Hénin has refused to be received by the style of revenge. Without ever complaining, he relentlessly evokes the half-million Syrians who misplaced his life in the course of the warfare and by no means lingers on his personal destiny. Modesty all the time. Above all, he refuses to have the sufferer standing as a CV. But quite the opposite, speech in prisons or from younger folks, in colleges, in neighborhoods, to clarify why jihadism is a useless finish. With phrases. By calling on their intelligence. To their humanity.