The only surviving bomber speaks: “In prison they treat me like a dog.” And someone yells at him: “You’re a pig!”
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS – «We are like dogs here! – shouts Salah Abdeslam in the box of the accused, after standing up -. I have been treated like a dog for more than six years (he was actually arrested in March 2016, ed). Here it is beautiful (referring to the new courtroom, ed), there are screens and air conditioning, but behind we are treated like dogs ». In the courtroom, from the area reserved for civil parties, someone yells “Because you are a pig!”. Another: «It was enough that you didn’t kill 130 people!». The main defendant at the trial for the Bataclan and other massacres of 13 November 2015 he then turns to the president of the court, pointing at him with his finger: «I have never complained in six years. After death we will resurrect, and you too will be held accountable“. The president remains calm, tells him that it is enough, “we are not in an ecclesiastical court”, Abdeslam sits down again. It is the first clash of a historic trial, the largest ever organized in France for a criminal affair, which will last nine months and which has attracted almost total attention from the very beginning.
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Fighter profession
A few hours earlier, the main defendant, Salah Abdeslam, black shirt, hair pulled back, beard, was called to provide general information. Despite the predictions, which suggested absolute silence, the terrorist lowers his mask and approaches the microphone: “First of all I would like to testify that there is no other God but Allah and that Mohammed is his messenger ». “We will see this later,” replies with great calm the president of the Court of Assizes, Jean-Louis Periès. Parents’ names? “They have nothing to do with this story.” It is therefore the judge who pronounces them. Profession? “I gave up my profession to become an Islamic State fighter»Says Abdeslam. “To me it was a profession: temporary worker”, Periès points out, who flaunts serenity but at the same time seems not to want to play the game of Abdeslam’s provocations.
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The only survivor
Abdeslam the only Islamic terrorist who survived after having participated in the massacres of 13 November at the Stade de France, at the outdoor tables of restaurants and at the Bataclan. It’s unclear if his explosive belt didn’t work, or if he gave up triggering the bomb at the last moment, giving up his planned suicide. That evening his brother Brahim Abdeslam he was part of the commando, and died – fortunately without making other victims – blowing himself up in front of the Comptoir Voltaire restaurant. Salah Abdeslam instead threw his belt in a garbage can in Montrouge, and then fled to Molenbeek in Belgium, where he was arrested on March 18, 2016.
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The lawyer: “Everyone must be defended”
Extradited to France e incarcerated in the Fléury-Merogis prison, in the summer of 2018 Salah Abdeslam contacted a young lawyer unknown to the public, Olivia Ronen, now 31 years old. In September 2018, the woman went to speak with the terrorist in prison. «We discussed a lot – he told the Parisian -, I thought something could be done. I love challenges. A lawyer does not defend a case, but an individual. Even if sometimes there is the temptation to exclude someone from humanity, this person is a part of it as much as we are ». Before speaking in court, Abdeslam approached Ronen and whispered a few words to her.
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A signal launched outside
His statements about Allah and his being a fighter of the Islamic State can be interpreted as a desire not to recognize the legitimacy of the Court to judge him, because in his view only Allah can do it. But there is also the fear that Abdeslam’s words are a signal sent out, to proselytize by showing that the battle continues despite the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and to convince other potential terrorists to take action, in a moment that sees the intersection of three events: the Paris trial for the Bataclan and the others massacres of 13 November, the return of the Taliban to Kabul and the twentieth anniversary of 11 September.
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September 8, 2021 (change September 8, 2021 | 19:40)
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