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.
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. But the magistrates showed themselves to be more lenient with regard to a certain number of defendants.
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 could make the link between the provision of false papers and the terrorist project”, explained the magistrate. 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.
Ditto for the three defendants who appeared free: they were sentenced to suspended prison sentences and will therefore not return to detention. On the other hand, thehe 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 Pakistani Muhammad Usman and the Algerian Adel Haddadi, the “upset operational staff” stranded on their way back from Syria, were each sentenced to 18 years in prison. The Pnat had asked for 20 years against them.
As to five senior executives of the Islamic State group, presumed dead in Syria and tried in absentia, they were sentenced to incompressible life imprisonment. Just like Salah Abdeslam.
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, “felt 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. He, like the other defendants, have ten days to appeal the decision.