Justice: “French Mountaineer Hervé Gourdel’s File Opened”

On Thursday, the Criminal Court of First Instance in Dar El Beida will begin the trial of those involved in the murder and kidnapping of the French national “Herve Gourdel” who was heinously assassinated in 2014 by terrorist groups calling themselves: “Soldiers of the Caliphate”.

The judge will hear in a public session the statements of the defendants after the file was postponed on February 4 in response to a request presented by the defense committee due to the health condition of the main defendant, “Hamzaoui Abdel Malik,” who suffered from a severe health ailment during the last court session.

Therefore, a doctor was fetched by the court to examine the accused and provide him with medical assistance, and the session was suspended for about half an hour before addressing the requests submitted by his defense lawyers.

As a matter of fact, the trial of the accused in the assassination of the French national and mountain guide Hervé Gourdel, killed in September 2014, was postponed by the Court of Dar El Beida (East of Algiers) to Thursday February 18.

Hervé Gourdel (55 years old), mountaineer, was kidnapped by a terrorist group on September 21 in Tizi-Ouzou province before being assassinated on the 24 of the same month.

The French mountain guide and tourist had gone to the Djurdjura mountain range for mountaineering.
He was kidnapped there on September 21, 2014, at night, near the village of Ait Ouabane in Akbil municipalit, by the terrorist group called “Jound Al-Khilafa or (“the soldiers of the caliphate”).
He was on board a car, in the company of Algerian friends who were released by the kidnappers. Three days later (September 24), Hervé Gourdel was beheaded.

Hervé Gourdel’s remains were found and repatriated to France in January 2015.

The terrorist group (Jound Al-Khilafa) claimed responsibility for the act in “retaliation for France’s engagement alongside the United States in the strikes” against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Iraq.

As soon as the French hostage was beheaded, the ANP forces had launched 3,000 soldiers in the tracks of the terrorist group and carried out a large scale search operation in the area, scene of the assassination, as well as in the surroundings.

The search operation carried out for more than three months had made it possible to find, then put out of harm’s way, three of the terrorists involved in the assassination of the French tourist.

They are Laâredj Ayoub, eliminated on October 9, 2014, Belhout Ahmed, killed on November 14, and Abdelmalek Gouri, shot dead on December 22 of the same year.

At the head of this terrorist group, Abdelmalek Gouri claimed to be the author of the kidnapping and beheading of Gourdel.

The terrorist chieftain had been eliminated in the Issers region (65 km east of Algiers).