Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the 10-man unit that carried out coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, has been found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, the harshest sentence available under French law.
Abdeslam, a 32-year-old French citizen born in Brussels, was found guilty of taking part in a series of attacks and shootings in the French capital, which killed 130 people and injured more than 490.
The attacks, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility, began when suicide bombers attacked in front of the national sports stadium on the night of Friday, November 13, 2015. Suicide shootings and attacks on cafes and restaurants followed, and finally a gun attack at the Bataclan Theater during an Eagles of Death Metal rock concert killed 90 people.
After the largest criminal trial ever held in France, a court found Abdeslam guilty of terrorism. He was given a full life sentence, the most severe punishment that can be imposed under French law. It offers only a small possibility of parole after 30 years.
Another 19 suspects were found guilty of conspiring or offering logistical support, with sentences ranging from two years to life in prison.
Mohamed Abrini, a childhood friend of Abdeslam accused of carrying attackers and weapons, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 22 years.
Only 14 of the 20 defendants appeared in court. The rest were missing, presumed dead, and were tried in his absence.
Salah Abdeslam.
For 10 months in a specially built and heavily guarded court, hundreds of people who survived the deadliest peacetime attack on French soil gave shocking details of their ordeal: from crawling in front of corpses in the Bataclan until being held hostage by gunmen there or avoiding Kalashnikov fire. restaurant floor tables.
Nine of the 10 men in the group who attacked the city died that night, committing suicide or being shot dead by police, including Abdeslam’s older brother Brahim, who detonated an explosive vest in a Paris bar.
Abdeslam was the sole survivor. He went to a bar north of Paris, but later threw his explosive vest in a bin and called friends to come pick him up and drive him back to Brussels. For months, he hid in the city where he had grown up, dodging one of the largest human hunts in Europe.
He was arrested in March 2016 after a shootout with Belgian police in the suburb of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean in Brussels. Days after his arrest, terrorists suspected of being part of the same terrorist unit attacked Brussels airport and the city’s metro system, killing 32 people and injuring hundreds.
Paris investigators argued that Abdeslam intended to explode in a Paris bar on the night of the November 13, 2015 attacks, but that his explosive vest was defective. He argued that he withdrew at the last minute.
He was accused of providing crucial logistical and planning support and also of having left suicide bombers at the Stade de France earlier in the night.
Abdeslam remained silent for years after his arrest in 2016.
Prosecutors highlighted the contradictions in Abdeslam’s testimony in the Paris special court. At the start of the trial, he had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and regretted that the explosives attached to his body did not detonate.
He later said he had changed his mind when he arrived at the Paris bar and deliberately turned off his vest because he didn’t want to kill people “singing and dancing” on a night out.
He said his older brother, whom he had always tried to emulate and impress, had asked him in the summer of 2015 to pick up Islamic State fighters returning to Europe from Syria and take them to Brussels. Prosecutors dismissed as false his account that he had been persuaded to join the unit just two days before the attacks.
Abdeslam’s behavior changed over the course of the 10-month trial. In April, he apologized to the victims in court and asked them to “hate me in moderation.” In his closing remarks in court on Monday, he said he had “evolved”.
He referred to their conditions of imprisonment in solitary confinement, saying it had been a “shock” at first to face so many people in court. But now he felt “calm” because he had managed to find a “likeness of social life” by being taken from his cell to court.
“I have made mistakes, but I am not a murderer. I am not a murderer. If you convict me of murder, you will be committing an injustice,” Abdeslam told the court this week.
“My first words are for the victims. I already said sorry. Some will say that my apologies are insincere, that it is a strategy … More than 130 dead, more than 400 victims. Who can apologize without sincerity for so much suffering? “
During the final discussions on Monday, Abdeslam’s lawyer, Olivia Ronen, told the judges that her client was the only member of the group who had not fired explosives to kill others that night. He could not be convicted of murder, he argued. Abdeslam had told the court that “it was not a danger to society”.
Prosecutors had argued that a life sentence was justified, saying Abdeslam’s rehabilitation into society seemed impossible because of his “deadly ideology.”
During the trial, a lawyer asked Abdeslam how he would like to be remembered. “I don’t want them to remind me,” he said. “I want them to forget me forever. I didn’t choose to be the person I am today.”