© AFP – Benoit Peyrucq
This court sketch made on April 14, 2022 shows Salah Abdeslam during the trial for the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, which took place in a temporary courtroom set up in the “Palais of Justice” in Paris.
Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the jihadist commando that perpetrated the November 2015 attacks in Paris, apologized to the victims on Friday at the end of his testimony during an extraordinary trial at the Special Court in the French capital.
“I want to express my condolences and offer an apology to all the victims,” Abdeslam told the court, in a statement mixed with tears. “I know the hate remains. Today I ask you to hate me in moderation,” he said. “I ask you to forgive me.”
The comments marked the dramatic end to three days of testimony by Abdeslam, 32, who in the opening stages of the trial had maintained a rigid silence and occasional outbursts against the court.
Abdeslam is the main suspect in the trial for the November 2015 attacks, after the other jihadists who participated in the events died during or after the attacks.
One of his defense lawyers, Olivia Ronen, during the interrogation of her client, asked him if he did not regret having carried out his plan to the end. “I don’t regret it. I didn’t kill those people and I didn’t die,” she replied.
“I would like to say today that this story of November 13 was written with the blood of the victims. It is their story and I was part of it,” he added. “They are linked to me and I am linked to them,” she said in a trembling voice, before presenting his apology.
“I know that this (apology) is not going to heal you,” he stressed, addressing the injured and those who lost their loved ones. For me it is a victory”, he concluded.
The attackers killed 130 people in suicide attacks and shootings near the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert hall and on street terraces of bars and restaurants on November 13, 2015, in the worst terrorist attack that France experienced in times of peace.
Last minute change of heart
During his testimony on Wednesday, Abdeslam told the court that he changed his mind about carrying out the killings at the last moment. .
“I went into the cafe, I ordered a drink, I looked at the people around me… and I said to myself: ‘No, I’m not going to do it,'” the defendant argued.
Abdeslam said he was informed of the plans for the Paris attack on November 11, two days before it was carried out. That happened in a meeting in Charleroi, in Belgium, with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, accused of being the intellectual author of the attacks. Abaaoud was killed in a raid by French special forces in the Parisian neighborhood of Saint-Denis.
Until then, Abdeslam thought he was going to be sent to Syria. Instead, they told him that he had been chosen to carry out an attack with a bomb belt.
“It was a shock for me, but it ended up convincing me,” he said. “I ended up agreeing and saying, ‘Okay, I’ll move on.'” But in that meeting they did not give him any details about the objectives of the attack.
When he finally did not carry out the attack, he told the Court how he took his car and drove around Paris at random until it broke down.
He then recounted that he got out and walked, stressing that his memories of that moment were “fuzzy.”
Con AFP