Othman Garrido sentenced to 30 years in prison for participation in double execution in Syria

The Paris Special Assize Court on Tuesday sentenced Othman Garrido to 30 years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by a two-thirds security sentence. This 32-year-old former French jihadist, originally from Montpellier, was found guilty of organized gang murder for his participation in a double public execution committed in September 2015 in al-Qaryatayn, Syria, as well as terrorist criminal association. The attorney general had requested life imprisonment with a security sentence of 22 years.

On the other hand, he was acquitted of the charge of murder concerning another victim. The accusation was based in particular on a photograph showing a man with a partially masked face near a decapitated head. The photo, of poor quality, was neither dated nor geolocated and the experts were never able to formally identify the man as Othman Garrido. “The court took into account his time in detention and logically acquitted him of the charge of assassination,” declared his lawyer Me Antoine Ory.

Garrido described himself as “born radicalized”

His participation in the double execution of two Iranians in 2015 was, however, upheld by the court. Photographs found in a phone attributed to his wife show him in the pick-up transporting the condemned, then alongside Oumar Diaw and Yacine Rettoun, two French jihadists who are now dead. The three men then appear in front of the decapitated bodies.

Opened on September 14, the trial retraced the family journey of the accused, who left for Syria in 2012 at the age of 18. Othman Garrido described himself as “born radicalized” into a very religious family headed by a converted father. The attorney general described this family as “under cover, withdrawn in itself and radicalized”, adding: “It is an Islamist fighting family. It’s a family where the children don’t draw faces, where we buy a TV to stone it.”

The influence of “sectarian mechanisms”

The defense insisted on the influence of this family environment and on the “sectarian mechanisms” noted by experts, believing that the young man had few possibilities to escape from it. The prosecution, on the contrary, considered that Othman Garrido and his older brother Oubey had gradually gained autonomy before leaving for Syria, where the rest of the family then joined them. “They had the choice to get out of this regimentation, not easy, but they had it,” argued the attorney general.

Our file on jihadism

The question of Othman Garrido's evolution in detention finally occupied an important place in the debates. He spoke of his studies, his psychological follow-up and his distancing himself from jihadist ideology, a journey recognized by experts but welcomed with caution by the prosecution. Me Louise el-Yafi, lawyer for the French Association of Victims of Terrorism, summed up this uncertainty: “Neither a convinced jihadist nor a perfect repentant. What do we do with all this complexity? » Before adding: “Is he dissembling, is he sincere? The truth is that I don’t know.”