Salah Abdeslam has been sentenced to the maximum sentence in France without a reduced sentence in a macro trial that also found the other 19 defendants guilty
The 20 suspects in the macro-trial of the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, which killed 130 people and injured 350, were sentenced this Wednesday to two years in prison by a Paris court. life imprisonment without a reduced sentence. However, they can appeal the sentence.
The prosecutor’s office had demanded sentences of between five years and life imprisonment for five of the suspects involved in the attacks to a greater or lesser extent. Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the terrorist commandos that attacked on November 13, 2015, was sentenced by a Paris court to life imprisonment with no possibility of a reduced sentence. This is the maximum penalty in France and is rarely handed down.
Abdeslam was found guilty of “organized gang murders in connection with a terrorist company”. The court considered the jihadist “co-author” of the attacks and estimated that “the set of targets (six in total in Paris and Saint-Denis) should be considered one and the same crime scene,” the court president explained. Jean-Louis Péries reads the verdict.
The terrorist, who declared himself “a fighter of the Islamic State” at the start of the trial, was part of the commandos that carried out a series of coordinated jihadist attacks on six points in the French capital: near the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis, on several terraces of Parisian bars and restaurants and in the Bataclan concert hall.
The jihadist, who declared his innocence during the trial, assured that he is not a murderer because he has not killed anyone. He claimed he withdrew at the last minute and did not activate his explosives belt. In fact, during the trial, the explosive vest was shown not to work, which, according to the court president, “seriously questions Salah Abdeslam’s statements regarding his resignation” to commit the attack.
Mohamed Abrini, who accompanied the commandos to Paris before returning to Brussels the night before the attacks, was sentenced to life in prison with a security term of 22 years. Six of the suspects, who are believed to be dead, have been tried in absentia.
With the reading of the verdict, the macro process of the worst attacks in the history of France ends. The trial, which began on September 8, 2021, has lasted nearly ten months. It has been a veritable judicial marathon involving five magistrates and their deputies, 14 defendants on the bench, 542 volumes of investigative files, 2,578 civil parties, 330 lawyers and 141 accredited media outlets.
During the hearings, some 400 witnesses – victims, relatives of the victims and experts – testified, including former French President François Hollande. The former socialist president was at the Stade de France at a friendly match between Spain and Germany when the first explosion happened.
Lawyers, defendants, victims, victims’ next of kin and judges have tried to put all the pieces of this huge legal puzzle together. Six years and seven months after the attacks, many of these pieces do not quite fit together and questions remain unanswered. Of the nine terrorists who took part directly in the attacks, eight are dead. They died when their explosive belts exploded or were shot by French police.
A few hours before the verdict was announced, Life for Paris, one of the associations of victims of the attacks of 13 November 2015, announced its dissolution in 2025, 10 years after the attacks. “The end of the trial should also mark the beginning of an ‘after’ that we are all hoping for, although we don’t know the way,” the victims’ association said in a statement. It’s time to try to turn the page on some of the attacks that marked their lives forever.
Source: La Verdad
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