At the trial of the November 13, 2015 attacks, Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers concluded two weeks of pleadings by arguing that the only surviving member of the Paris and Saint-Denis commandos had given up on blowing himself up.
From our special envoys to the Paris courthouse,
” You wanted to die for ideas? Agreed, but of slow death. The immense room of the November 13 trial has sometimes taken on the air of a pantheon of literature during these ten months of hearing, as the great authors have been summoned there. Last to appear at the bar before the verdict expected on Wednesday, Olivia Ronen, she paraphrases Brassens to denounce the sentence requested by the public prosecutor against his client: life imprisonment with an incompressible security period. Either the insurance to end his days in prison. ” A terrible pain, launches the fast-paced lawyer. A white death which, unlike capital punishment, takes place in indifference. »
This sanction, the heaviest of the Penal Code, has only been pronounced four times since its introduction in 1994, each time against child killers. The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office had justified its request by arguing ” the immense seriousness of the alleged facts » to Salah Abdeslam, « steeped in ideology and his inability to express remorse. ” He remains convinced that he did not kill anyone. He repeated it at the hearings. This is to say the path that remains for him to travel before finding, perhaps one day, the path of repentance. “said Advocate General Camille Hennetier.
” As if these nine months had not happened »
Olivia Ronen recognizes this without difficulty: she expected a heavy sanction against her client, he who brought his aid to the Islamic State group, who agreed to be part of the November 13 commandos and who deposed the three terrorists of the Stade de France before fleeing. But not this one. ” The incompressible perpetuity, she says, it is as if those nine months had not happened. As if Salah Abdeslam’s attitude hadn’t changed one iota. However, in his defense, quite the opposite happened.
It is true that the behavior of the 32-year-old Frenchman changed a lot during the hearing. Presenting themselves as ” Islamic State fighter At the opening of the trial, he then took advantage of the personality interrogations to display the smoothest possible image of him, and finally that of a little brother under influence who joined the commandos at the last moment. In its indictment, the prosecution had seen ” a balancing act “aiming” to downplay the facts “. But for his lawyers, between this first day of hearing and his last speech in April where, eyes red with tears, he asked for forgiveness from the victimsSalah Abdeslam gradually showed “ his real face “. A face that they will therefore in turn redraw.
” Salah Abdeslam would be either a bloodthirsty monster, and no return to society is possible, or a fanatic wanting to impose Sharia in France, and no return to society is possible. Except that Salah Abdeslam does not fit into either of these two boxes. begins Martin Vettes. The lawyer affirms it: his client is not a violent person. In the file, moreover, nothing suggests it, except the testimony of a bar owner who recounts having seen him swinging a chair after losing at Bingo. ” By dint of looking for the root of the evil, the accusation becomes caricatural “, he mocks. On the contrary, continues Me Vettes, Salah Abdeslam is presented by his relatives as a nice boy. ” Including by his fiancée, who nevertheless has every reason to blame him. She describes him as a young, party animal, carefree, who never talked about religion and never practiced, except a little, in the end. »
To hear his lawyer, the shocks that punctuated the start of the trial are rather to be attributed to the ” social shock What did Salah Abdeslam do when he arrived in a room? crowded and necessarily hostile after more than five years in solitary confinement. But after these first days, his behavior changed, continues Me Vettes. And this thanks in particular to the words ” so strong “of the victims he took away” every testimony with him and for a long time “.
Above all, recalls the lawyer, when we could expect him to be silent as he had done during the years of investigation, Salah Abdeslam spoke. Words sometimes out of time, also fragmented – “ he does not have an infallible memory – but he spoke. ” Whatever one may say, this trial would not have been the same at all if he had kept silent. “says Me Vettes. And since he was talking, he continues, we expected him to say everything; as he was the only surviving member of the November 13 commandos, he was its black box. ” But Salah Abdeslam did not know everything. He wouldn’t have ended up with an explosive vest on his shoulders if he had known everything from the start. »
A ” Islamic State Interim »
The defense then returns to the course of the accused. His radicalization, born of an indignation that Daesh knew how to exploit “, which she places in 2015 when the prosecution established it a year earlier. The occasional services he could render to the terrorist cell through his big brother Brahim. These rentals made with his identity document, sometimes without his knowledge. Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers repeat it: he was in no way a seasoned jihadist, but only a ” Islamic State Interim » having only joined the terrorist commandos the day before the attacks, replacing Mohamed Abrini. The proof, they say: unlike all the others, he has no kunya, the name that jihadists take when they pledge allegiance, no protest video, no stay in Syria, no training.
Following his colleague, Olivia Ronen arrives at this evening of November 13, 2015. That evening, after dropping off the terrorists at the Stade de France, Salah Abdeslam had abandoned his car in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, his explosive vest in Montrouge, and was brought back to Brussels. What was his role? Also blow up at the Stade de France, as he said during his first hearing with Belgian judge Pannou? In a metro, as a computer file found in a hideout of the terrorist cell might suggest? Had he given up or had he been prevented? Mystery.
During his last interrogation, Salah Abdeslam had finally explained that after having led the three terrorists to the Stade de France, he had entered a café in the 18th arrondissement to blow himself up and had given up on it ” out of humanity “. ” The prosecution asks you to save the question of whether he spontaneously gave up or not. She tells you that it doesn’t matter in the end. But it must be taken into account », Asserts Me Ronen to the special assize court, before embarking on a demonstration supposed to prove the statements of his client. She recalls the remarks made by Mohamed Abrini who, on three occasions, had evoked an argument between Salah Abdeslam and the coordinator of the attacks, the latter asking him why he had not used his lighter as planned in the event of a malfunction. ” Each vest wearer therefore has in mind the possibility of a malfunction “, observes Me Ronen who summarizes: Salah Abdeslam could have used a lighter to trigger the explosion, he did not do it.
In the eyes of the defence, nothing can therefore justify that Salah Abdeslam, ” the interim Islamic State “, be targeted by the same sentence as Osama Atar, the ” brain of the November 13 attacks. ” What the prosecution is doing is sanctioning Salah Abdeslam as a symbol “, denounces Me Ronen. And as she had done through the voice of her client in November, she recalls her conditions of detention ” tailored “: complete isolation, the plexiglass at the window which prevents the free air from passing, the two cameras installed in his cell which monitor him continuously…” We console ourselves by saying that it is better than Daesh jails. We have fallen so low that our only reason for satisfaction is to do better than Daesh », Laments the lawyer. ” If you follow the floor, she concludes, terrorism has won and we will just have to understand that this was all a joke. »