Christmas market attack plotter jailed for 30 years by French court

A French court on Thursday sentenced Audrey Mondjehi to a 30-year jail term for helping an Islamist militant who killed five people in a 2018 attack on a Christmas market in the eastern city of Strasbourg.

Published: 5 April 2024 08:32 CEST

Christmas market attack plotter jailed for 30 years by French court

Audrey Mondjehi has been jailed for 30 years for his role in the 2018 attack at the Christmas market in Strasbourg (Photo by Abdesslam MIRDASS / AFP)

The 42-year-old was the main defendant of four accused of helping Cherif Chekatt, who shot and stabbed shoppers at the market and was killed by police after a 48-hour manhunt.

Prosecutors said Mondjehi, who is of Ivory Coast origin, helped Chekatt obtain a gun for the attack in a square in front of Strasbourg cathedral on December 11, 2018.

Chekatt killed five people, including a Thai tourist and an Italian journalist, and wounded 11 before he was wounded and escaped in a taxi.

He was killed in a shootout two days later, after hundreds of police and security forces launched a manhunt. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, and a video of Chekatt pledging allegiance to the group was found at his home.

Mondjehi was found guilty of associating with terrorists but not guilty of complicity in terrorist murders as the court said he did not know what the gun was to be used for.

Mondjehi was one of four defendants in the trial held before a special court in Paris. He gave no reaction before being led away.

Two other men were found guilty of playing a minor role in helping Chekatt and were given jail terms of up to five years. A third defendant was acquitted.

An 83-year-old man still faces charges for having sold the gun used in the attack to Mondjehi and Chekatt. But he is considered too ill to be tried.

Mondjehi was a former prison cellmate of Chekatt, who the court was told was a hardened criminal who had been on a list of security risks.

Prosecutors said the two had a close relationship in the months leading up to the market attack.

“I think deeply and feel a lot of sadness for all the victims. All my life I will regret what happened,” Mondjehi told the court in his final statement on Thursday ahead of the verdict.

“I would never have thought that he would have done that, I never thought that he was radicalised,” he said.

While defence lawyers acknowledged Mondjehi had admitted to helping obtain the weapon, they insisted he was unaware of Chekatt’s plans and so should not be convicted of terrorism.

“The victims feel relieved,” said Mostafa Salhane, the taxi driver forced to take Chekatt away from the scene of the attack, following the verdict. Salhane sat in on nearly every day of the five-week trial.

“Justice has been served,” said the mayor of Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, in a statement after the sentence was handed down. “I hope that the verdict can contribute to the process of mourning [for the victims] even if their suffering will always be immense.”

The trial, which began in February, is the latest legal process over a number of jihadist attacks in France since 2015. Most of the actual attackers were killed, but a number of people have faced trials for complicity.

In December 2022, eight suspects were convicted over a 2016 attack in the Mediterranean city of Nice, when an Islamist in a truck killed 86 people.

In June 2022, 20 defendants were convicted over their roles in major attacks in the French capital in November 2015, when 130 people were killed.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.