He arrived in the box wearing a black jacket and a white shirt, looking neat. A first sartorial sign of his intention to answer questions from the special assize court in Paris. Invited to stand up by the president, Salah Abdeslam nevertheless let the suspense hover for a few minutes: “I confess that I still hesitate on whether to answer the questions or not”, he launched, courteous. For the first day of his interrogation on the facts, Wednesday, February 9, the accused most media of the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015 asks to make a “spontaneous statement”. “I wanted to say today that I did not kill or hurt anyone, even a scratch, I did not do it”he says calmly.
The only survivor of the commandos who left 131 dead and hundreds injured that evening in Paris and at the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis, fled leaving his explosive belt behind him in a trash can in Montrouge (Hauts -de-Seine). Technical failure or renunciation? The instruction never made it possible to shed light on this point. In his first remarks, Salah Abdeslam seems to steer the court towards the second option: “I see that in terrorism cases, the sentences that are handed down are extremely severe with regard to people who, sometimes, did not kill.”
“In the future, when an individual finds himself in a metro with a 50-kilogram suitcase of explosives and at the last moment he will say to himself ‘No, I don’t want to do it, I’m going to backtrack’, he will know that he will not have the right to think that because afterwards, we will chase him.”
Salah Abdeslambefore the special assize court of Paris
After this update “important” on the “message” sent by the French justice to the aborted suicide bombers present in this box, Salah Abdeslam finally agrees to answer with confidence, and a relative good will, to the questions of President Jean-Louis Périès. The 31-year-old accused goes from “I” to “we” and finds his “breviary of radicalized”, to use the expression of expert psychiatrists Daniel Zagury and Bernard Ballivet. The one who presented himself from day one as “an Islamic State fighter” returns to the context of his “membership” to the terrorist organization.
Planning obliges, the court questions him, Wednesday and Thursday, only on the period preceding September 2015. Salah Abdeslam plays with this constraint, refusing to answer questions which come too close to the facts. But he talks with ease about the reasons for his commitment to jihad. “We can make a suicide bomber in 24 hours”but for him, “Things happened in stages”. “At the start of the conflict” in Syria, “in 2012-2013”the young resident of Molenbeek, near Brussels, “sees how Bashar Al-Assad treats his people”. Salah Abdeslam backs ISIS soldiers ahead of caliphate proclamation [en juin 2014]. “I am for them, I love them.”
“It was my humanity that made me look to Syria. At first it was not religious, I knew they were suffering and I was in comfort, busy enjoying the life while they were being slaughtered, I felt guilty”, continues the defendant. Asked about the beheading videos watched in the basement of his big brother Brahim’s café, Les Béguines, the youngest denies: “I saw the videos of people being bombed by Bashar Al-Assad’s regime or the coalition, I don’t know. Babies full of dust, collapsed buildings, that’s what touched me .”
However, Salah Abdeslam legitimizes the actions of the Islamic State and launches into a demonstration on the death penalty in France, before “Mitterrand” do the“abolish”and on “slavery”a “social status among us in Islam”. He maintains that the attacks of November 13 are a response to coalition bombardments in Syria and Iraq, a “defensive jihad” with “the means at hand”. “When they touched civilians, it was to mark the spirits.” In a dance from one foot to the other, the thirty-year-old resumes: “I am explaining to you the Islamic State’s point of view because I have already said it, I did not kill anyone, I did not hurt anyone.”
After a rather heated exchange between his lawyer, Olivia Ronen, and Jean-Louis Périès on the effective date of the first strikes in the Iraqi-Syrian zone, Salah Abdeslam, clearly rather comfortable in the exercise, dares to “Mr. President, let’s take a breather”. And run straight away: “I tell you, it is because of François Hollande that we are here.” The magistrate reframes it skilfully.
“We are not here to judge the government and French politics, history will do it for us, much better.”
The president of the special assize court of Paris, Jean-Louis Périèsto Salah Abdeslam
The president tries to circumvent the “politico-religious discourse” of his interlocutor. “Let’s get back to you.” If he is cooperative, he who has remained silent during the five years of investigation, Salah Abdeslam evades questions about the departures to Syria of his childhood friend Abdelhamid Abaaoud, coordinator of the attacks, of his co-defendant Mohamed Abrini and of his brother Brahim, a suicide bomber from Comptoir Voltaire, whom he describes as “leader” and of “charismatic”. Was he influenced by this figure? “It was thanks or because of my brother, he was the one who pulled me towards this, he was always kind to me (…), I knew he was not going to bring me towards my loss”, he says today. But despite the “services” returned to the Islamic State in the months preceding the attacks, Salah Abdeslam claims to have been informed of the bare minimum. “Everyone had their little secret, they were ISIS soldiers, one there, one there, and in the end, boom, everyone came together.”
In addition to his direct participation in the attacks, Salah Abdeslam is accused of having gone to Hungary and Germany to look for jihadists who arrived from Syria between August 30 and mid-October 2015. He is also on trial for having purchased products to manufacture the explosive belts, renting vehicles and hotel rooms for members of the terrorist cell. But the accused does not venture into this terrain, prefers “let’s go slowly”. New pirouette: “What I can tell you is that I am not a danger to society.”
When did he pledge allegiance to the Islamic State? “Forty-eight hours before the attacks”, Salah Abdeslam replies to the president, before correcting with the assessor: it was after. “I did not swear allegiance according to the rule that must be followed, it was in my heart.” While on the run, he sent a letter to the Islamic State, in which he wrote: “Although I would have liked to be among the shahid [martyrs] (…) there was a defect in my belt. (…) I would just like, for the future, to be better equipped before taking action.”
Before the court, he contextualizes, at a minimum: “I thought I was going to die, I was on the run, at that point I was like, ‘I’m going to do a courier’.” At no time did he say that he wished to die a martyr at the time of his arrest. “I thought the police were going to shoot me, I didn’t get far.” He was shot in the ankle. Is he now attached to life? When asked about Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Salah Abdeslam finds all his ambiguity: “He was my brother, someone I loved very much. Today he is gone and soon, I hope I will join him.”