The Paris Special Assize Court sentenced Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the commandos who killed 130 people in Paris on November 13, 2015, to life imprisonment on Wednesday evening. This is the heaviest penalty in the French penal code.
Islamist commandos opened fire on cafe and restaurant terraces, attacked the Bataclan performance hall during a concert and three suicide bombers blew themselves up near the Stade de France during a football match between France and France. ‘Germany.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Extremely rare penalty
On Wednesday, the five professional magistrates followed the requisitions of the public prosecutor, who had requested this extremely rare sanction against the only defendant of the box judged as co-author of the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, near the capital, which have “appalled and “flabbergasted” France.
The incompressible life sentence, also called “real life”, makes the possibility for those who are sentenced to it of obtaining a release minimal. It had so far only been pronounced four times.
The lawyers of Salah Abdeslam, who repeatedly claimed during the proceedings to have “given up” triggering his explosive belt on the evening of November 13, 2015 out of “humanity”, had pleaded against this “slow death penalty”.
The court considered that his explosive vest was “defective”, calling “seriously into question” the statements of the person concerned on his “renunciation”.
Excuses
The 32-year-old Frenchman remained with his arms crossed, his eyes hard in the box, throughout the reading of the deliberations, delivered after 148 days of hearing, which makes it the longest trial in judicial history. French.
“I’m not an assassin, I’m not a killer,” he said in his last words to the court on Monday morning, reiterating his “sincere” apologies to the victims.
The courtroom specially built for this trial had never been so crowded, and survivors and relatives of victims squeezed together on wooden benches, in an electric atmosphere.
The professional magistrates condemned the 19 co-defendants of Salah Abdeslam, dismissing the terrorist qualification for only one of them.
Mohamed Abrini, the “man in the hat” of the Brussels attacks, who was also “planned” in the November 13 commandos, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a security sentence of twenty-two year.
In total, the five magistrates handed down sentences ranging from two years’ imprisonment to life against the 20 defendants tried since September, including six by default.
ats/ebz