The trial in Paris of five jihadists accused of the kidnappings and detention of four French journalists in Syria in 2013, and the perpetration of “acts of torture and barbarity” against their captives, which now enters its second week, has been hearing harrowing accounts of the survivors’ experiences at the hands of the Islamic State group.
It also heard the moving accounts by the wife and two daughters of British aid worker David Haines, who was also held by the group alongside the French hostages, and who was kept after their release and finally beheaded after 18 months in captivity. The three women, who had travelled from Britain to be present in person at the trial, are civil parties (plaintiffs) to the case.
Two very different atmospheres emerged after the trial opened last week. One is what were almost joyful scenes, inside the courtroom before the start of hearings, or in the grand corridors of the Palais de Justice, the former principal Paris lawcourts now dedicated to terrorism trials, as people met up again after long separation. There were embraces, laughter and chatter as people swapped news, mostly in English but also in French. These are the French, Italian and Spanish journalists and aid workers who, between 2013 and 2014, were unluckily captured by the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, ISIL, (later known simply as the Islamic State organisation) then overrunning swathes of Syria in a bloody jihadist campaign.
A few of those in the court building, survivors of what they dubbed as their “community prison”, appeared less pleased to catch up, but the overall impression was that of a comforting recovery of friendships.
But when the high-pitched courtroom bell rings, announcing a resumption of the hearings, the gowned magistrates enter and everyone takes to their seats, the atmosphere darkens. Those present within the wood-panelled, decorated walls of the imposing 19th-century courtroom, the Salle Voltaire, are transported thousands of kilometres away, and 15 years back in time, to the town of Aleppo in north-west Syria, or to Raqqa, some 160 kilometres further east, and to the plaster and blood of buildings where the victims of the jihadists cry out in pain at the beatings and torture they suffered, and where the air was filled with what one of the four captured French journalists, Édouard Elias, last week described as “the smell of death”.
Of the five accused, only three are present at the trial, which will last until March 21st. The two others are believed to have been killed in Syria, but they were nevertheless charged and sent for trial in absentia because there is no formal proof of their deaths.
The three appearing are Mehdi Nemmouche, 39, currently serving a life sentence for a 2014 shooting attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels which left four people dead, and fellow French national Abdelmalek Tanem, 34, who was previously convicted of joining the terrorist ranks in Syria and handed a nine-year jail term. Both face life sentences if found guilty of the detention and torture of the four journalists. Present alongside them is Kais al-Abdallah, a Syrian national charged with kidnapping and detaining two of the French journalists, for which he faces a maximum jail sentence of 20 years if convicted. All three deny the charges.
The journalists are freelance photographer Elias, radio reporter Didier François, Nicolas Hénin, Middle East bureau chief for Solas Films, and freelance photographer Pierre Torres, who were all kidnapped by the jihadist group in June 2013. They were released, amid still unconfirmed but insistant rumours that France had paid a ransom, in April 2014.
They spent most of their captivity in a disused eye hospital in Aleppo, which the Islamic State (IS) took over to use as a base for holding, torturing and beating hostages, as well as executing Syrian captives. Mehdi Nemmouche and three of his co-defendants are accused of carrying out the torture there. Held alongside the four French journalists were David Haines and his Italian colleague Federico Motka, both working in Syria for a French NGO, the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development. They were kidnapped by IS in March 2013 near a refugee camp close to the border with Turkey, in Syria’s Idlib province.
The two aid workers, together with the French journalists, were later transferred from the Aleppo hospital to another location where they were kept under the guard of the infamous British group of four IS thugs nicknamed, because of their English accents, “the Beatles”. They had all already been held by the latter for a short period at the beginning of their captivity.
While Motka was eventually released in May 2014, also amid rumours of a ransom payment, Haines, 44, remained captive until September that year, when he was decapitated by one of the so-called IS “Beatles”, Mohammed Emwazi, aka “Jihadi John”, who produced propaganda videos in which he featured himself beheading hostages. They included Haines, and another British aid worker, Alain Henning, US aid worker Peter Kassig and US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Emwazi was killed in a joint US and British drone attack in Raqqa in November 2015, one day before an IS cell carried out the mass shooting attacks in Paris on November 13th.
Last Thursday and Friday, following the testimony of two of the French former hostages, it was the turn of surviving foreign captives, and the family members of Haines, from the Scottish town of Perth, and Peter Kassig (whose widow took part via a video link with the US), to testify, helped by an armada of interpreters. Despite the language issues and translations that were not always precise, the courtroom was emotionally charged over the two days, and notably when the family of David Haines took the stand.
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“My name is Bethany Haines, I’m the daughter of David Haines, a British aid worker who spent his life helping people, only to be kidnapped, held, tortured and killed by a bunch of cowards,” began the eldest of the two daughters. “He was a kind and caring person who helped those who needed it most. On March 12th 2013, my world turned upside down and I wouldn’t even know until three weeks later.”
Bethany, 27, read out the last phone text message she would receive from her father. “Hey there darling, hope you are OK. I’m fine and working away in Turkey. Hope you are feeling better now. Love, Dad.”
The daughter from her father’s first marriage, Bethany continued: “Over the next three weeks my dad would receive a barrage of texts and voicemails that he would never see or hear.” She cited them:
“Hey Dad, hope you are enjoying Turkey. I’m busy studying for my exams”
“Hey dad, call me when you can. Love you.”
Hey Dad, are you out in the field? My first exam went OK…I think. Stay safe.”
“Hey Dad, have I annoyed you? If I have I’m sorry. Call me. Love you.”
“Daddy I need you. I’ve had an awful day. Miss you.”
“Dad, I’m sorry, phone me.”
“Daddy I need you.”
“Daddy, are you there?
“Daddy you’re scaring me.”
“Where are you Daddy?”
A 100 million-euro ransom demand
During that period, Dragana, Haines’ second wife, told the court how she lied to their daughter Athea, then aged three, to keep her unaware of his fate. “I told her ‘you spoke with him yesterday’ or ‘the day before yesterday’. Fortunately, my daughter didn’t yet have the notion of time.”* Dragana was advised by the British authorities to keep her husband’s kidnap secret, which she did throughout almost all of his 18 months in captivity, telling friends that she had him on the phone regularly, and that all was well.
“I struggled to deal with the worry of not knowing where my Dad was or how he was being treated,” said Bethany. “The only thing that would help ease the worry was a strong drink, but that soon started to provide its own problems.”She said she fell into a “dark hole” of depression.
“My Mum and I were given hardly any news from the British Foreign Office about my Dad. Deep down I knew I would never see him again, but I had to power on as I knew my Dad wouldn't want me to give up, and I knew he wouldn't be giving up either. [...] A ransom letter was sent demanding 100 million euros for his release.” Bethany said she was told the demand was unrealistic. “That confirmed it, and after the release of the beheading video of the American journbalist Steven Sotloff, the countdown to the day I had been dreading for the last 18 months was on.”
On September 2nd 2014, the IS group circulated a video of the decapitation of US journalist Steven Sotloff by “Jihadi John”. At the end of that video, David Haines was paraded, wearing an orange jumpsuit. The IS thug warned that he would be the next victim if the US and Britain did not “back off” from their military action against Islamist group. Back in Britain, the family were besieged by the press and placed under police protection.
Eleven days later, on the evening of September 13th, Bethany was awoken by Dragana, in the company of police officers, who announced that a video of her father being decapitated was circulating online. In that moment it felt like my world shattered and a piece of me died too,” Bethany told the court. “I couldn’t deal with it and told everyone to go home and that I would deal with it in the morning. I needed one more night with my Dad before having to start a lifetime without him.” As she gave her testimony, Athea, her half-sister now aged 15, burst into tears.
Addressing the court in turn, Athea, who was aged four years and three months old when her father was executed, recounted: “I still remember the last time I asked my mother when he [her father] would come back home. It was an innocent question, spoken with the hope that I would one day see him walk through the door again. But the answer I received changed everything. My mother, with pain in her eyes, told me the words that no childshould ever have to hear: ‘He’s never coming back home because he’s dead’.”
Dragana told the court that she had at first pretended to Athea that her father had died in an accident. “She said to me, ‘Poor Daddy’.”*
Following September 2014, the family faced an aftermath of deep trauma. Bethany explained that her father’s parents died soon after their son’s beheading. “My Dad’s parents fell to illness and died shortly after as they couldn’t deal with the loss of their son,” she told the court. “I have since been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and depression. Simple things, like going to sleep, is an impossible task.” She dropped out of education and the feeling of guilt that she felt over the loss of her father led her to self-harm with a razor-blade, which scars present on her arms bear witness to.
My father was taken from me before I had the chance to know him, before I had the chance to love him the way a child should love their father
Bethany said her nine-year-old son has started asking questions about his grandad David, “why he can’t go to the football with him, why he can’t help him with his homework […] But my son’s questions go beyond why he can’t speak to his grandad. He asks why Mummy has to go away, why Mummy wakes up with nightmares, why Mummy has scars on her arms, why Mummy sometimes can’t get out of bed, and why Mummy isn’t like the other mummies.”
Athea, who was visibly struggling to contain her emotions, recounted how hard it is for her to hear her friends speak of their fathers; “Stories of laughter, of shared lessons, of the kind of bond that only a father and child can have – while I sit there in silence unable to contribute because I have so few memories of my own. My father left for Syria when I was just about two-years-old, a time when my world was too small to grasp the concept of separation, too innocent to realise that some goodbyes are forever.”
“My father was taken from me before I had the chance to know him, before I had the chance to love him the way a child should love their father,” Athea concluded.
Every day, David spoke in his head with his daughters. Now that I have become a father, I understand what it means to be deprived of your children
Dragana told the court that she developed cancer after her husband’s murder. ‘I didn’t know how to explain to my daughter that, two years after her father was killed, her mother could die in turn,” she said. “She was just six-years-old, but I decided that I should never again lie to her.”
Since then, Dragana has had seven courses of chemotherapy, and also undergone radiotherapy. The cancer has gone, but she still receives treatment. “I don’t have the guarantee that the cancer will not return,” she said.*
There were red eyes in the courtroom throughout the testimony of Bethany, Athea and Dragana Haines. At the end of their statements, their French lawyer, Joseph Breham, approached the microphone. He had planned to ask the them a number of questions in turn, but he too was overcome with emotion and, offering his excuses, returned to his bench.
As the Haines family addressed the court, a man with moist eyes sat gazing at them intently. This was Federico Motka, the Italian aid worker and colleague of David Haines, and who was kidnapped and held with him.
He gave his own testimony on Thursday morning, swapping between English and French as he spoke. He described in terse detail the violence he and other captives were subjected to during their detention, and notably under the guard of the so-called “Beatles”. One example he gave was how a sadistic young jihadist got around an order given to him by his IS superiors not to enter the cell where hostages were being kept; in order to obey this, he demanded that Motka and his fellow captives stretch their legs across the glass of a broken window so he could hit their feet. Another example was how the hostages were made to take part in boxing matches between them, when he who lost the bout would be subjected to waterboarding torture, which creates the sensation of drowning.
But such recollections affected him less than his memories of David Haines. “Every day, David spoke in his head with his daughters,” said Motka, todayaged 42. “Now that I have become a father, I understand what it means to be deprived of your children.”* Searching for his words, he added: “I can’t really explain, this feeling of guilt. I got away, not him.” From the benches reserved for the civil parties, the four French former hostages gave him encouragement with smiles of compassion. A storm of sentiments united them.
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The following day, speaking via a video link from a courtroom in Indianapolis, Paula Kassig, the mother of 26-year-old US aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by IS in November 2014, told the court how she had developed, following her son’s murder, a heart illness that forced her to give up her job as a nurse. “He was an only child,” she said, her husband sat beside her. “We will never know the joy of being grandparents,” adding: “Our house is too calm now.”
Danish freelance photographer Daniel Rye Ottosen, now aged 35, was kidnapped by IS in May 2013 and released in June 2014 after his family and others close to him reportedly paid a 2-million-dollar ransom to the jihadists. He was one of the most badly treated of the hostages, notably at the hands of “Jihadi John” and his cohorts. In the space of two weeks of captivity, he lost a third of his body weight. Today he has regained his health.
On Friday he told the court how the horrors he endured made him lose the will to live, and that he tried to commit suicide. Tied by his captors, he managed to pass part of the chain around his neck in order to break it. “I felt an immense relief,” he told the court. “I could end everything, leave the pain behind me. My family would not receive a video of me having my throat cut.”* He had the feeling, he said, of weightlessness, which he thought was the process of dying, but which in fact was due to his torturers lifting him higher to prevent his escape by suicide.
“Thank you for listening to my story,” he said simply at the end of his testimony. Two of the sitting magistrates gave him a well-meaning smile.
Except for on one occasion, Mehdi Nemmouche showed no emotion listening to the flow of so many dramatic accounts. The exception was when he was listening to the testimony of Marcos Marguinedas, a Spanish journalist who explained that, during his six months of captivity, he decided not to take his medication in order to hide from the jihadists that he was HIV-positive. On hearing that, Nemmouche became unsettled, visibly troubled. The hard mask of the killer’s face had dropped.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version, with some added reporting, by Graham Tearse