“Mr. Abdeslam, we start with you. It’s the alphabetical order that wants that.” A new chapter in the trial of the November 13 attacks opened on Tuesday, November 2, with the questioning of the 14 defendants present, after five weeks of painful accounts from the civil parties. And it was with the most media of them, the only surviving member of the terrorist commando, that the hearing began.
Full beard, short hair, wearing a gray waistcoat over a beige shirt, Salah Abdeslam first confirmed his nationality: he is French and not Franco-Belgian, as has often been written. “I am of Moroccan origin. I only have French nationality.” Before specifying: “My parents came to France first, that’s why they have French nationality (…) then they left for Belgium”. He speaks in a calm voice, sometimes barely audible, far from his bloodshots of the previous weeks, as at the opening of the trial, where he had estimated that the accused were “treated like dogs”.
It is in this tone, placid, that he answered for nearly two hours the questions of the court, which for the moment must relate only to “the personal life of the accused by stopping at the bottom of the file”, recalled the president in the preamble. The facts themselves will not be studied until January. It was therefore a question of understanding the life trajectory of the accused, their family ties, their educational and professional career.. The subject of radicalization should not be broached.
“My childhood was very simple, I was a calm, kind person, there was a good atmosphere, there was always a good atmosphere with everyone”, explains Salah Abdeslam from his box. In middle and high school, he is portrayed by his teachers as “a good student”. He obtained the equivalent of the baccalaureate in Belgium, then was hired in the same company as his father, as an electromechanic, where he took care of the repair of trains during “more or less a year and a half”.
It was during this period that his life took a turn: he was dismissed from this company because of his first stint in prison, in 2011, after an attempted break-in. “Who were you convicted with?”, asks the president. “I don’t want to say it”, answers Salah Abdeslam. “You were notably with Abdelhamid Abaaoud”, specifies the president, in other words the presumed operational chief of the attacks of November 13, a good friend of Salah Abdeslam.
He then goes on to do odd jobs: “I was working and sometimes I was unemployed, sometimes as a temporary worker. I yoyoed”. Asked about his legal escapades, in particular his multiple violations of the Highway Code, he replied with a slight smile: “I like the speed”.
On several points, he remains silent. We will not know anything about his girlfriend, to whom he was engaged at the time of the attacks. It does not extend to his family either, except for his big brother Brahim, the kamizake of Comptoir Voltaire. “He’s the brother I liked best. I love them all, but he was my favorite brother”. A magistrate-assessor asks him to explain why. “Love has no logic, I can’t explain that. It took care of me more when I was young.”, he says.
Regarding his past as a party animal and as a player at the casino, he is very concise: “It was just to entertain me.” Asked several times about this behavior, quite far from the religious convictions that were his later, he ended up defending himself: “It was very, very rare that I went to a nightclub. I am neither a player nor a nightclub dancer.”. He also claims to have never been “cannabis user, only a hobbyist, a joint every now and then on weekends”. And to evoke the “western values” which he has “been impregnated”.
This mention did not escape a lawyer for the civil parties, who asked him a little later: “What do you think the values of the West correspond to?” Response from the interested party: “It is to live like a libertine, to live without worrying about God, to do what one wants.” His radicalization, which began in 2014, looms large on several occasions, such as when he explains that he stopped playing chess in prison because he learned that it was forbidden in Islam.
His lawyer, Olivia Ronen, questioned him at length about this life in detention. “It has been said that you are in solitary confinement. It’s a bit abstract… Can you describe your cell to me?”, she asked him. “It’s nine square meters, there are two surveillance cameras, I can’t do anything, I have no activities. I can just go out in the morning for a walk or to play sports for an hour and after- noon, the same “, details Salah Abdeslam.
She asks him to describe her individual backyard promenade. “You can’t see the sky, it is walled up, very small. It is maybe 30 square meters”, he specifies. A quick debate begins with the president, who ensures that the sky can be seen through the barbed wire. On the crowded benches of the civil parties, a voice whispers: “Our children, they are in heaven”.
A lot of ink has been spilled over the daily life of the most closely watched detainee in France and his lawyer specifies that she wishes to go against the opinion that he would have a “special preferential treatment”. “Even animals are not treated like this”, launched Salah Abdeslam, who claims to have thought of suicide several times. If he could hold out here, he said, it’s thanks “To [s]we lord “.