(Radio France) Following the second Covid-enforced adjournment of the year, the Paris attacks trial resumed on Tuesday with evidence from Muhammed Usman, one of the accused, on his religious background and his activities in the Syrian war zone. Nothing was terribly clear.
Usman’s strategy is simple. Confronted with statements which might be unfavourable to himself, this Urdu-speaking Pakistani answered in monosyllabic French: “no” or “it’s not true” or “I did not.”
Given the chance to answer less damaging questions, or faced with his own contradictions, he made use of the court translator to offer long and not always clear explanations, sometimes in flat opposition to evidence he has already recorded in his various confrontations with the police, in Greece, Austria and France.
The broad lines of Muhammed Usman’s story are, by now, well established.
