The trial of the terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015 opened for nine months, Wednesday September 8, 2021, before the specially composed Assize Court of Paris.
The accused are questioned in turn about their backgrounds before the commission of the attacks.
Salah Abdeslam was questioned on Wednesday about his ideological adherence to the Islamic State and his knowledge of the radicalization of his brother, Brahim, who died in the attacks of November 13, 2015.
At the specially composed Court of Assizes of Paris,
The trial had started barely a week ago.
Called to speak on the facts, Salah Abdeslam spoke directly to the victims and their relatives.
"The minimum we can give them is to tell them the truth", had then launched the only survivor of the commandos of the attacks of November 13, 2015. But after years of instruction marked by his silence, what truth was he ready to say now?
Without being able to explain in detail his switch to radicalization, the main accused however offered some answers this Wednesday, during his first interrogation on the merits.
In an off-the-cuff statement, the man in the white shirt and white mask insisted he didn't "kill or hurt anyone".
Believing that French justice wishes to make him "an example", Salah Abdeslam regretted the "message sent" in the event of maximum condemnation: "In the future, when there will be an individual who finds himself on a bus, in a subway with a 50 kg suitcase of explosives and who will say to himself at the last moment: "I'm going to go back, I can't", he won't be able to think about that, because he will know that he will be humiliated like me , that we will hunt him down, that we will not forgive him.
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“Did I do the right thing to back off?
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This sentence, launched in the introduction of his interrogation, came to shed light on one of the many gray areas relating to his degree of responsibility and involvement in the attacks committed in Paris and Saint-Denis.
At the wheel of the car responsible for dropping off the terrorists at the Stade de France on the evening of November 13, did the accused give up his deadly mission at the last moment or was he forced to abandon it at cause of a failure of its explosive belt as envisaged by certain expert reports?
Without clearly validating it, Salah Abdeslam touched on this first hypothesis several times.
However, this major subject was not to be addressed during this hearing initially devoted to Abdeslam's jihadist ideology.
But one of the lawyers for the civil parties, Aurélie Cerceau, led him to clarify his point.
Visibly anxious to answer, the accused once again portrayed himself in the guise of a repentant: "When a person has not killed or touched anyone, you cannot condemn him as if you had the head of the Islamic State.
And when you're in prison, in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, you really say to yourself: Did I do the right thing to back down or should I have gone all the way?
We say to ourselves: I should have started this thing!
".
Never, in six years, has Salah Abdeslam gone so far on the path to truth.
"I felt guilty"
Very comfortable, sometimes bordering on insolence, the 31-year-old man, however, tried to control the pace of the audience.
“I think we have to go more slowly Mr. President if you want to understand”, “I will come back to it later”, he launched several times when the questions of the court approached the fateful date of November 13, 2015. Faced with a full house, he also explained that his interest in Syria was born at the turn of the year 2014.
“It was my humanity that made me look to Syria.
At first it was not religious, I had compassion for these people who were suffering and I was here enjoying life while these people were being slaughtered.
I felt guilty,” he said.
The departure for Syria of his older brother, Brahim, who died in a suicide bomber on the evening of November 13, also played a role in his support for the Islamic State: "It is thanks or because of my brother, it is him who pulled me to this.
I always listened to him, I knew he didn't want my harm, that he wanted my good (…) I trusted him and I knew he wasn't going to lead me to my downfall.
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"No danger to society"
Rejecting once again the responsibility for the attacks on France's commitment to the international coalition against Daesh, Salah Abdeslam has, on the other hand, denied nothing of his ideology.
"Clinging to the Sharia", legitimizing slavery and denouncing "slander" at the mention of the abuses committed in Iraq and Syria by "his brothers", the main defendant at the trial explained that he had pledged allegiance to "in his heart" to the terrorist organization.
Our trial file
Despite these ideological claims, he considers today to represent "no danger to society".
Asked about this by a civil party lawyer after 7 hours of interrogation, Salah Abdeslam said he was “tired”: “I am exhausted, my parents are starting to age, if I have the chance to go out, I I will take care of my parents.
Then I would go to the Orient.
(…) But I'm not going to hurt or kill anyone, I've never done it, ”he concluded.
Justice
Trial of the November 13 attacks: "They masked their game well", say relatives of the Abdeslam brothers
Justice
Attacks of November 13: At trial, the accused who did nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing
Terrorism
Justice
Trial
Attacks of November 13
Salah Abdeslam
Daesh
Terrorist attacks in Paris
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