The seven judges of the specially composed Paris Assize Court ruled in the same way as their colleagues at first instance. They declared Audrey Mondjehi not guilty of complicity in the assassinations and assassination attempts in connection with a terrorist enterprise perpetrated by Cherif Chekatt, on December 11, 2018, in downtown Strasbourg. On the other hand, they found him fully guilty of the crime of terrorist criminal association.
The 44-year-old rapper from the Hautepierre district was given the same sentence as during the 2024 trial: 30 years of criminal imprisonment, with a security period set at two-thirds. Upon his release from detention, the Ivorian forty-year-old will have to return to his native country, the court having pronounced against him, as was done at first instance, a definitive ban from French territory.
“I didn’t know this monster was radicalized”
Throughout her appeal trial, Audrey Mondjehi and her four lawyers worked hard to refute the amalgamations. “Cherif Chekatt, this monster, I didn’t know that he was radicalized and that he had planned an attack,” the accused declared again, Friday morning, in his final speech. The investigation and debates, however, highlighted a close proximity between the two men in the three months preceding the Christmas market massacre.
On the morning of December 11, 2018, after escaping an arrest by the gendarmes as part of a bloody robbery attempt committed four months earlier, Cherif Chekatt was taken in by Audrey Mondjehi. The latter had transported him to Colmar, where he had bought for him an 8mm standard revolver and a box of 50 rounds of ammunition from a retired arms collector. He then dropped him off at the Baggersee tram station in Illkirch-Graffenstaden.
At 7:48 p.m., the 29-year-old from Strasbourg would begin his murderous journey, during which he would execute five people and injure eleven others, most of them seriously, before being shot dead by the police after 48 hours on the run.
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