November 13 attacks: 20 people sent back to the assizes, including Salah Abdeslam

Text by: RFI Follow

On November 13, 2015, the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis left 130 dead and 350 injured. Four and a half years later, the sprawling investigation has just ended with the dismissal of twenty suspects for a trial scheduled for early 2021.

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Among the accused is firstly the Franco-Belgian Salah Abdeslam, the only living member of the commandos who hit the bar terraces and the Bataclan concert hall in the heart of the capital, as well as the surroundings of the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis, in the Parisian suburbs. These attacks, the deadliest ever committed in France, were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) organization.

348 pages of charges

The indictment order, a 348-page document outside the appendices signed on March 16, and the conclusions of which were revealed by a press release from the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat), follows the latter's requisitions formulated in late November. The investigation, carried out by six then five instructing judges, will have been extraordinary with 472 volumes and a million pages, in close collaboration with Belgian justice.

►Read also: Attacks November 13, 2015: assizes trial required for 20 people

The order is still subject to appeal, which should not delay the trial. This is scheduled to start in January 2021 and is expected to last six months. Work has already started in the heart of the Paris courthouse, located on the Ile de la Cité in the center of the capital, to build a courtroom large enough and secure to accommodate the proceedings.

In addition to the accused, more than 1,750 civil parties, as well as hundreds of lawyers and journalists, are expected. " I welcome the decision rendered by the judges, but given the current circumstances, I do not know if this case will be heard within the time that we had planned, " responded Olivier Morice, lawyer for 35 families.

The judicial calendar is also affected by uncertainty given the shock wave of the coronavirus: the French authorities have decreed the closure of all the courts, whose activity will be reduced to " essential litigation ", and have called the postponement of assize trials to curb the virus.

A European-wide terrorist cell

On November 13, 2015, three nine-man commandos attacked the French capital and Saint-Denis at several points, near the Stade de France, at restaurant terraces and in the Bataclan concert hall.

The investigations revealed a much larger jihadist cell behind these attacks claimed by the Islamic State organization, with ramifications across Europe, mainly in Belgium.

On March 22, 2016, it also struck at the airport and in the Brussels metro, killing 32 people. The trial for this attack will begin after the trial in France has ended, " probably in September 2021, " said the Belgian Minister of Justice in December.

►Read also: Opening of the trial of Reda Hame, jihadist recruited by Abdelhamid Abaaoud

(With AFP)

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