The verdict will "not erase the horror of what happened on November 13, 2015," said French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.

"But it represents an important stage for all survivors and all French people," said the head of government after the verdict was announced on Wednesday evening.

Islamism is "a deadly poison".

France owes it to the victims of November 13 and all victims of terrorist attacks to continue the fight against Islamist terrorists "with all its might," she stressed.

Michael Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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130 people were killed in the capital during the night of terror.

François Hollande, who was president during the terrorist attacks, spoke of an "exemplary process".

"The guilty have been sentenced with the means of the rule of law," he praised.

France's democracy has proven to be resilient "without questioning rules and principles".

This was an allusion to the debate being led by the extreme right, according to which terrorism cannot be defeated with the means of the rule of law.

Le Pen no longer calls for the death penalty

In her reaction to the verdict, Marine Le Pen called for "destroying Islamist fundamentalism".

She described Abdeslam's maximum sentence as "a relief for the entire French nation".

Le Pen gave up her party's decades-long call for the reintroduction of the death penalty during this spring's election campaign.

The death penalty was abolished in France in 1981.

Le Pen pointed out that indefinite preventive detention will in future allow a "real life sentence".

On Wednesday evening, the Special Circuit Court of five professional judges convicted 19 of the 20 defendants of terrorism-related offences.

The maximum sentence was imposed on the main defendant, 32-year-old Salah Abdeslam.

Life imprisonment is supplemented by indefinite preventive detention, as introduced in France since a law change in 1994.

Article 132, paragraph 23 of the Penal Code (Code Pénal ) allows preventive detention indefinitely.

But only with a change in the law in 2016 was this possibility also extended to terrorist crimes.

In the absence of retrospective indefinite preventive detention, Abdeslam was sentenced to the maximum sentence of attempted murder against police officers at the Bataclan concert hall.

Before him, only four defendants had been sentenced to that sentence, including (deceased) serial killer Michel Fourniret.

The jury also found the 18 other defendants guilty on all counts.

European Dimension of Terror

Only the fraudster Farid Kharkhach was deprived of the criminal offense of belonging to a terrorist organization and converted to belonging to a criminal organization.

There were no acquittals.

The presiding judge Jean-Louis Périès refrained from reading the 120 pages of the verdict in full.

He made the European dimension of the Islamist terror cells clear.

Mohamed Abrini, known as the "man in the hat" on surveillance footage of the Brussels airport attack in March 2016, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 22 years of preventive detention.

"Mohamed Abrini was fully integrated into the terrorist cell," said Judge Périès.

The jury also ruled that Osama Krayem, Sofien Ayari and Mohamed Bakkali were involved in the terrorist group.

The three men are said to have planned a terrorist attack at Amsterdam Airport and were spotted there on November 13, 2015.

They were sentenced to 30 years in prison combined with 20 years of preventive detention.

Two of the accused, Muhammad Usman and Adel Haddadi, were convicted thanks to the good work of the Austrian security services.

They were arrested in Austria before they could act and have now been sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Ali El Haddad Asufi and Yassine Atar, two other terrorist commando aides, were sentenced to 10 and 8 years respectively.

Abdeslam's driver, Mohammed Amri, was also sentenced to eight years in prison.

As all three terrorists have already served most of their sentences in pre-trial detention, they are unlikely to be returned to detention.

This also applies to the three defendants Hamza Attou, Ali Oulkadi and Abdellah Chouaa, who were sentenced to two years in prison and were able to leave the courtroom at large, taking into account their pre-trial detention.

Six defendants were convicted in absentia, five of them are believed to have been killed in the Iraqi-Syrian war zone, and one is being held in Turkey.

"Our trust in the judiciary has been renewed," said Arthur Dénouveaux, chairman of the Life for Paris victims' association.

He survived the attack on the Bataclan concert hall and described the verdict as "fair".

But there is a legitimate debate as to whether Abdeslam deserved the maximum sentence.

Life for Paris plans to disband on the 10th anniversary of the attacks on November 13, 2025.

The club said: "The end of the process must also mark the beginning of an 'after' that we all hope for.

Even if we don't know its shape yet."