AFP
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NOS News•today, 20:27•Amended today, 21:17
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Salah Abdeslam has been sentenced to life without parole for the 2015 Paris attacks, along with 19 others and has been found guilty of the terror attacks. Other suspects received sentences ranging from eight years to life.
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Abdeslam is guilty of murder, the presiding judge, Jean-Louis Périès, said. He is the only one of the ten perpetrators who survived. The others blew themselves up or were shot. Abdeslam said he walked into a cafe with his bomb vest, but decided not to blow himself up “out of humanity”. Justice disputed that: the bomb vest would have been defective. The court adopts the prosecutors’ reading.
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Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is the highest possible sentence in France, a sentence that is not often imposed. Convicts sentenced to life imprisonment in France are often released after 20 to 25 years.
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Another suspect, Moghammed Abrini, was also sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 22 years behind bars. Three others, Mohamed Bakkali, Osama Krayem and Sofien Ayari, were sentenced to 30 years in prison. Two others received sentences of 18 years, one a 10-year sentence and one an eight-year prison sentence, of which they must serve two-thirds.
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130 people were killed in the attacks on November 13, 2015. Terrorists attacked the Stade de France football stadium, then fired their weapons at cafe terraces and entered Bataclan with bomb vests and Kalashnikov’s concert hall. Most people died there: 89. The attacks were claimed by Islamic State (IS).
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We previously made this look back at the attacks in Paris:
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Six IS attacks in one night in Paris shock the world
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Abdeslam was arrested in Belgium in March 2016. Belgian prosecutors also suspect him of involvement in the Brussels attacks, four days after his arrest. He was extradited to France, but has already been sentenced in Belgium to 20 years in prison for a shooting that injured three police officers.
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The nineteen suspects who were on trial next to Abdeslam helped with, for example, offering shelter or supplying weapons. Six people were tried in absentia, including five senior IS members believed to have died in Syria.
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According to the court, the Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Bakkali played a “defining role” in the preparations for the attacks. Bakkali tried to arrange firearms, hiding places and cars. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence in Belgium for his role in an attack on a Thalys between Amsterdam and Paris in 2015.
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Mohammed Abrini, also known as ‘the man in the hat’ because of video footage showing him wearing a headgear, also played a key role in the logistics surrounding the attacks, according to the court. He is also suspected of involvement in the attacks in Brussels in 2016.
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The mega-trial against the terror suspects lasted ten months. About 300 lawyers were involved, there was extreme security and the court itself was rebuilt at a cost of millions of euros, especially for this trial. About 500 people attend the verdict in court.
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