PARIS | Salah Abdeslam, the only member still alive of the jihadist commandos of November 13, affirmed Wednesday at the trial of these attacks to have given up on triggering his explosive belt the evening of the attacks which left 130 dead in Paris and Saint-Denis.
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“The people who did not kill anyone, we cannot condemn them as if we had the heads of the Islamic State, it is not possible”, he declared, “in truth, we say to ourselves “I should have started this thing” (..), we say to ourselves “did I do the right thing to backtrack or should I have gone all the way”?
At the start of his questioning before the Paris Assize Court, the 32-year-old Frenchman and main defendant at the trial said: “I didn’t kill anyone and I didn’t hurt anyone. Even a scratch, I did not do it”.
A few hours later, a lawyer for the civil parties questions him about this “active repentance”.
“I am not the only one (among the defendants) to speak of reversing, we heard several people say + I am not capable, I changed my mind +”, he replied.
“These people who were there in the terraces (…) I frequented trendy cafes like that. I put on a shirt, I perfumed myself, then go the next day to the same cafe…”, he continued.
Speaking generally of candidates for suicide operations, Salah Abdeslam added: “There is bound to be a moment when we say to ourselves, ‘Do I do it or not?’
The accused also explained why he had not gone to Syria: “Because of the ties I had in Belgium, that is to say my parents, my fiancée, I was at an impasse”, he said, although at the same time he recalled that he had his “brothers in Syria”.
The questions from the civil party lawyers continued at the end of the day.
Opened in September, the trial of the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris and Saint-Denis (Paris region) on November 13, 2015 is scheduled until May.