Recently indicted for “terrorist financing”, the Parisian lawyer Bruno Vinay, was temporarily suspended from the exercise of his functions by the council of the order at the request of the investigating judges, indicated his advice in a press release consulted this Sunday by AFP. This lawyer, who notably defended French jihadists who left to join the Daesh group in Iraq and Syria, is suspected of having paid money to an intermediary supposed to exfiltrate a French jihadist from Iraq.
As L’Express revealed in January, Bruno Vinay also provided financial support to one of his clients. The criminal lawyer had helped him pay for accommodation found on Airbnb while waiting for the agreement of the investigating judge in charge of the case to sign a shared tenancy agreement. A request finally refused by the magistrate.
READ ALSO >> The poison of French jihadists
In their press release, Bruno Vinay’s lawyers, Emmanuel Daoud and Laure Heinich, explain that the latter had been appointed in June 2017 by a Frenchman, recluse with his wife and children in Mosul, Iraq, who said he was a repentant of Daesh and “expressed the desire to surrender to the Iraqi authorities in order to be tried in France or in Iraq”.
According to a source close to the case, it is Maximilien Thibaut, a man from the Paris region and husband of Mélina Boughedir, a young Frenchwoman sentenced in June 2018 in Baghdad to life imprisonment for having joined Daesh.
READ ALSO >> What to do with jihadists returning to France?
According to the press release, Bruno Vinay was “in contact with two French journalists who offered to put their network at his service, in particular their fixer on the Iraqi side”. He would have informed the anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office, the consul in Iraq and the liaison magistrate of this desire to surrender, letters that remained unanswered.
The lawyer “acknowledges having given a sum of money directly in Germany to a contact of the fixer”, continues the press release, which underlines that “the money which was obviously not intended for [the group] Islamic State, could not any way to benefit him, having precisely been handed over to the Iraqi army”. But “the man was not saved, he died in the besieged city”. According to the source familiar with the matter, the disputed payment relates to a sum of 20,000 euros collected from the jihadist’s entourage.
In their press release, Bruno Vinay’s counsel ensure that these accusations are “pure fiction” and announce their intention to appeal the suspension of their client
These suspicions about money transfers to the Iraqi-Syrian zone appeared in a judicial investigation opened in 2017 for “terrorist financing” and “breach of trust in relation to a terrorist enterprise”, according to another source close to the case. In September, one of the journalists quoted in the press release, a specialist in jihadism affairs, was placed in police custody at the DGSI before being released without being prosecuted.
