the double face of the Abdeslam brothers

Before the radicalization that led them to plan the attacks of November 13, 2015, Brahim and Salah Abdeslam led a whole new way of life. Nine months before the attacks, a video shows the two young brothers dancing in a Brussels nightclub. If they were involved in petty crime, nothing foreshadowed the radicalization of the two young men, who blurred the lines for several years. “There was nothing that let me suppose that one day they could be involved in these attacks”, says Mr. Olivier Martins, Brahim Abdeslam’s lawyer between 2003 and 2015.

The two brothers grew up in Molenbeek on a square opposite the town hall. The locals remember discreet parents. “They played sports, participated in activities, went out clubs, had boyfriends and girlfriends. They had a life like any youngster their age.”, astonished a deputy mayor, who knew them. In the early 2010s, Salah Abdeslam was sentenced for the burglary of a garage, along with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, one of the first young people from the neighborhood to go to fight in Syria.