Man Who Lent Apartment to Paris Attacker Goes Before Judge

Jawad Bendaoud says that he didn’t know he had loaned his house to Paris attackers.

The man who loaned his Paris suburb apartment to the suspected ringleader and accomplices of the November 13 attacks on the city was sent before a French judge on Tuesday. He claimed he did not know who they were.

Jawad Bendaoud, who sparked a flurry of mocking social media memes for an interview he gave protesting his innocence as the police assault on the apartment in Saint-Denis was underway, was arrested soon afterwards.

Police targetted the apartment in northern Paris while hunting the attacks’ suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud who was killed during a police raid along with a woman called Hasna Aitboulahcen (who is thought to be Abaaoud’s cousin) and an unidentified man.

Bendaoud, whose detention was extended until Tuesday, could face formal charges. Police were tipped off to his possible involvement when they saw a man who resembled him talking with Aitboulahcen the night before the raid. Police said that the meeting between the two, could have been to negotiate payment for the apartment’s lease to the jihadists.

Shortly before his arrest, Bendaoud told AFP he had loaned his apartment to two people from Belgium as a favour to a friend.

A friend asked me to put up two of his friends for a few days. I said that there was no mattress, but they told me ‘it’s not a problem’, they just wanted water and a place to pray. I was asked to do a favour, I did a favour. I didn’t know they were terrorists.

Jawad Bendaoud

He said his friend told him the men came from Belgium, where according to investigators several of the jihadists were known to have lived.

At least 130 people died and more than 350 injured were injured in the attacks on a concert hall, restaurants and a football stadium.