Gwladys Laffitte, with Europe 1 and AFP 19h47, November 02, 2021
During the ninth week of the November 13 attacks trial, Salah Abdeslam recounted his journey on Tuesday.
The main defendant showed himself at ease at the stand, detailing his childhood and his various professional experiences before the attacks of November 2015.
"I was a kind, calm, helpful person".
At the November 13 trial, the main defendant Salah Abdeslam presented himself on Tuesday as a man with a fairly smooth course and "imbued with Western values" before his radicalization and the attacks.
The Paris Special Assize Court examines this week the personalities of the 14 defendants present.
Salah Abdeslam, 32 years old and the only surviving member of the jihadist commandos who left 130 dead and hundreds wounded in Paris and Saint-Denis, is the first to be questioned.
The exercise is delicate: it is a question of evoking his life without "going over on the merits" of the file which will be approached only in 2022, and therefore without evoking his religious commitment, as President Jean will repeat it several times. Louis Périès.
Abdeslam, a "good student", "loved by (his) teachers"
Beard provided, head shaved, big gray waistcoat on a beige shirt, Salah Abdeslam describes in succinct answers, by showing himself at ease, his childhood "very simple", happy, of son of Moroccan immigrants of Molenbeek, a commune of the Brussels agglomeration.
His father is a tram driver there, his mother a housewife, he is the fourth of five siblings.
"I have three older brothers, a little sister. What do you want to know?" Said Salah Abdeslam in a calm voice tinged with a slight Belgian accent, his hands clasped in front of him.
Stating that he only has "one" nationality - French - he describes himself as a "calm, kind, helpful" child.
"A good student", "loved by (his) teachers", he followed a "technical education in electromechanics", stopped studying at 18 to work.
He likes sports, "fighting, bodybuilding, football".
The court wants to talk about his personal life, his girlfriend before the attacks.
"Do you still have contact with her?"
"No".
"Did you have any other relationships before?"
Salah Abdeslam hesitates.
"I don't want to express myself on that, it's a bit personal".
The turning point of 2011 with Abaaoud
The accused, talkative since the opening of the trial after an almost constant silence during the investigation, does not avoid the questions even if he offers only brief, courteous answers. For eight weeks, the one who presented himself on the first day of the proceedings as an "Islamic State fighter" has spoken several times to justify the attacks or criticize his conditions of detention.
His career saw a first change in 2011: engaged for eighteen months in his father's company, Salah Abdeslam was implicated in a burglary attempt - after an alcoholic evening he explains - and made a first stay of five weeks in prison. The president asks him if he remembers with whom he was sentenced. "I do not wish to dwell on this subject" he said, "I will say it", exclaims the president. "With Abdelhamid Abaaoud", he explains. The accused smirks: his childhood friend is the coordinator of the November 13 attacks.
Dismissed after the burglary attempt, Salah Abdeslam will alternate between "interim and unemployment" and will add a dozen other convictions to his criminal record.
He also helps his brother Brahim for a time, a cafe manager and future killer and suicide bomber on the Parisian terraces.
It is the brother that Salah Abdeslam "preferred".
No request for release
The president of the court quotes another of his brothers, according to which Salah Abdeslam liked well "to go out, to frequent nightclubs, casinos". "Is that correct?" "Yeah," begins Salah Abdeslam. "Yeah, I used to be like that". The president encourages him to develop. "I went to public school in Belgium, I was imbued with Western values, I lived as you taught me to live in the West". And to specify: "I was not dancing, I am not really a dancer".
The magistrate then questioned him about his conditions of detention, in total isolation and under constant video surveillance since his arrest in 2016. Again, Salah Abdeslam said little. Visits "every month" from his family, phone calls and sports "one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening".
The president mentions his "unequal behavior" in detention and certain incidents.
He would have called the supervisors "waste of society", "SS", "disbelievers".
“Do you remember that?” Asks Jean-Louis Périès.
"No".
The first assessor Frédérique Aline wants to know why he has not requested release since he was imprisoned.
He is surprised.
"Because it's hard to imagine you're going to let go of me."
The hearing continued with the personality questioning of Mohamed Abrini, co-accused and childhood friend of Salah Abdeslam.