“I was a kind, calm, helpful person. “At the trial of the jihadist attacks that struck in Paris on November 13, 2015, the main defendant, Salah Abdeslam, presented himself on Tuesday as a man with a fairly smooth course and“ imbued with Western values ”before his radicalization and the killing.
The Paris Special Assize Court examines this week the personalities of the 14 defendants present. Salah Abdeslam, 32 years old and the only surviving member of the jihadist commandos who left 130 dead and hundreds wounded in Paris and Saint-Denis, in the Paris region, on November 13, 2015, is the first to be questioned.
The exercise is delicate: it is a question of evoking his life without “going over the bottom” of the file, which will not be approached until 2022, and therefore without evoking his religious commitment.
Full beard, shaved head, big gray waistcoat over a beige shirt, Salah Abdeslam describes his “very simple”, happy childhood, as the son of Moroccan immigrants from Molenbeek, a town in the greater Brussels area.
His father is a tram driver there, his mother a housewife, he is the fourth of five siblings. “I have three older brothers, a little sister. What do you want to know ? Salah Abdeslam asked in a calm voice tinged with a slight Belgian accent, his hands clasped in front of him. Specifying that he only had “one” nationality – French – he said he was a “kind, calm, helpful” child.
Modesty
“Good pupil”, “loved by [ses] professors ”, he followed a“ technical education in electromechanics ”and stopped studying at 18 to work. He likes the sport of “combat, [la] bodybuilding, [le] foot ”.
The court wants to talk about his personal life, his girlfriend before the attacks. “Do you still have contact with her?” ” ” No. “” And before, you had other relationships? Salah Abdeslam hesitates. “I don’t want to express myself on that, it’s a bit personal. “
The accused, talkative since the opening of the trial after an almost constant silence during the investigation, does not avoid the questions even if he offers only brief, courteous answers.
For eight weeks, the one who presented himself on the first day of the proceedings as an “Islamic State fighter” has spoken out several times to justify the attacks or criticize his conditions of detention.
His career took a first turn in 2011: engaged for 18 months in his father’s company, Salah Abdeslam was implicated in a burglary attempt – after an alcoholic evening, he explains – and made a first stay of five weeks in prison. Licensed, he will alternate between “interim and unemployment” and add a dozen other convictions to his criminal record. He also helps for a time his brother Brahim, manager of a café and future kamikaze and kamikaze of the Parisian terraces. It is the brother whom Salah Abdeslam “preferred”.
“Before I was like that”
The president of the court quotes another of his brothers, according to which Salah Abdeslam liked well “to go out, to frequent nightclubs, casinos”. “Is that correct?” “Yeah, I used to be like that”, confirms the accused.
The president encourages him to develop. “I went to public school in Belgium, I was imbued with Western values, I lived as you taught me to live in the West. But “I wasn’t dancing, I’m not really a dancer.”
The magistrate then questioned him about his conditions of detention, in total isolation and under constant video surveillance since his arrest in 2016. Here too, Salah Abdeslam said little. Visits “every month” from his family, phone calls and sports “one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening”. The president mentions his “unequal behavior” in detention and certain incidents. He would have called the supervisors “waste of society”, “SS”, “disbelievers”.
I went to public school in Belgium, I was imbued with Western values, I lived as you taught me to live in the West
The first assessor asks him why he has not made a request for release since he was imprisoned. “Because it’s hard to imagine you’re going to let go of me.” “