A verdict rendered in about fifty minutes. In front of a full house, after 148 days of hearing, the special assize court of Paris announced, on the evening of Wednesday, June 29, the sentences imposed on the 20 accused in the trial of the attacks of 13- November. The main defendant and the only living member of the commandos, Salah Abdeslam was sentenced to life imprisonment, as requested by the national anti-terrorist prosecution (Pnat). This sanction, rare, makes slim the possibility to obtain an adjustment of sentence and therefore a release.
In the eyes of justice, the 32-year-old Franco-Moroccan stands out from the other defendants by his role as co-author of “murders and attempted murders” committed on November 13, 2015, in particular against persons holding public authority, this which explains why he receives the heaviest full sentence in the French penal system.
“This is what would have been required against the perpetrators [de la tuerie] of the Bataclan but they are not there, so it is he who takes. Yet he is precisely in front of you because he has withdrawn”, pleaded his lawyer Olivia Ronen on Friday. The court, on the contrary, “considered that the different targets should be analyzed as a single crime scene”. And was not sensitive to the thesis of renunciation developed by Salah Abdeslam and his counsel during the hearing.
The explosive vest was not functional, which calls into question his statements regarding his renunciation.
The special assize court of Parisin his motives
Salah Abdeslam, whose “the integration into the Belgian cell was long before the attacks”according to the court, was also found guilty of criminal terrorist conspiracy for “watching videos of the Islamic State” in the café of his brother Brahim Abdeslam, a Comptoir Voltaire suicide bomber. In addition to its role in renting cars and hotel rooms for the commandos, the court said “convinced that he took charge of all the repatriations of the terrorists, with the exception of the two Iraqis” Stade de France suicide bombers. That he however conveyed to Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) the evening of the attacks.
“I recognized that I was not perfect, I made mistakes it’s true but I’m not a murderer, I’m not a killer. And if you condemn me for murder, you will commit an injustice “, he said, Monday, during these last words. During the reading of the deliberation, Salah Abdeslam kept his arms crossed, his gaze hard. He remained impassive to the statement of the verdict and his lawyers did not wish to react thereafter.
The court also followed the prosecution by sentencing to life imprisonment, accompanied by a security period of twenty-two years, another figure in the box, Mohamed Abrini, the “man in the hat” of the Brussels attacks, who was also “intended” in the commandos of November 13. According to his version, Salah Abdeslam replaced him at the last minute. A line of defense to which the court did not subscribe. According to the magistrates, this 36-year-old Belgian-Moroccan, childhood friend of the coordinator of the attacks Abdelhamid Abaaoud, “was won over to the theses of the Islamic State”. “It was during his stay” in the Iraqi-Syrian zone “that he was commissioned for these attacks”.
He “cannot claim to have ignored until the last moment the modalities of the attacks and the targets”, said President Jean-Louis Périès. His lawyer, Marie Violleau, did not fail to react to the outcome of the verdict: “We can ask ourselves if he had held a gun in his hands and had shot someone at close range, how much would the penalty have been?”
In his motives “expanded in more than 120 pages”and of which President Jean-Louis Périès read a summary, the court replied “yes” to all questions on the guilt of the accused, with the exception of Farid Kharkhach, for whom the terrorist qualification was not retained.
“There is nothing to establish that the accused [Farid Kharkhach] could make the link between the provision of false papers and the terrorist project.”
The special assize court of Parisin his motives
He was sentenced to two years in prison, when the prosecution had requested six. His defense pleaded acquittal. In pre-trial detention for five and a half years, he will immediately be released from prison.
The court was also more lenient than the prosecution with regard to the three defendants who appeared free, Ali Oulkadi, Hamza Attou and Abdellah Chouaa, described as “little hands” by the Advocates General. Accused of having assisted Salah Abdeslam in his escape, they were sentenced to suspended prison sentences, without a warrant, and will therefore not return to detention. Mohammed Amri, on the other hand, will remain in prison. Prosecuted for having picked up Salah Abdeslam by car on the evening of November 13, he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, with a two-thirds security period.
As for the logisticians, the Swede Osama Krayem, the Tunisian Sofien Ayari and the Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Bakkali were found guilty of complicity and sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment with a security of two thirds. The prosecution had however claimed life for the first two, a “binomial” qualified for “silent” of the trial, so little did they say during the hearing. For his part, Mohamed Bakkali, already convicted during the trial of the failed attack on the Thalys, is this time found guilty of having “played a key role in the logistics of the attacks” of November 13. The court notably pointed to its “old interest in armed jihad”.
The duo Adel Haddadi and Muhammad Usman, who were to be part of the Stade de France commandos, were sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment, against 20 years required by the prosecution, accompanied by a two-thirds security period. For the court, this 33-year-old Algerian and this 28-year-old Pakistani were determined “to continue” their way and “join the cell in Europe” if they had not been arrested in Austria before the attacks.
Finally, the court heavily sentenced the defendants absent from the trial. Ahmed Dahmani, suspected of being a logistician for the jihadist cell and imprisoned in Turkey, was sentenced to 30 years in prison with a two-thirds security period. And the five senior executives of the Islamic State group, presumed dead in Syria, including the sponsor of the attacks Osama Atar, were sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment.
At the end of the verdict, the defendants exchanged calmly with their lawyers while the civil parties left the room. They found themselves in front of the many cameras waiting for their reactions. Many expressed their relief. “There is a verdict that allows you to incarnate a responsibility”affirmed to the antenna of franceinfo Stéphane Sarrade, father of Hugo, killed at the Bataclan. “It’s a verdict that everyone will accept and find what they came for”, said another civil party at the end of the hearing. At his side, the father of Victor Munoz, killed on the terrace of La Belle team, conceded that he found “just punishment”.
“Justice has done its job.”
The father of Victor Munoz, killed at La Belle team
Others are a little more divided on the discrepancy between the qualifications retained and the sentences handed down. “Salah Abdeslam had the biggest sentence when he is not the genius of evil”underlined Franck, survivor of the Bataclan. “I will never be satisfied with the irreducible life sentence, for anyone”regretted Georges Salines, father of Lola, also killed in the concert hall. “Perpetuity is to turn off the light, it is to turn off hope”, summarized the lawyer of Mohamed Abrini. He, like the other defendants, have ten days to appeal the decision.