ABDESLAM. On Wednesday February 9, 2022, Salah Abdeslam confirmed that he had given up activating his explosive belt on the evening of November 13, 2015, wondering about his “reverse course”. What he said at the hearing.
[Mise à jour le 9 février 2022 à 19h53] It was not on the agenda, but Salah Abdeslam confirmed that he had given up trying to blow himself up on the evening of the November 13 attacks in Paris. “When you’ve been in prison for five years, you say to yourself that in truth, we should have started this thing,” he said from his box. Before adding: “when we are in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, when we are called names, when we are filmed, in truth we say to ourselves: should I have backtracked? ?” Salah Abdeslam was therefore well and truly equipped with an explosive belt on the day of the attack on the terraces and the Stade de France. A belt that he had finally abandoned, later found in a trash can in Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine).
This light (not more detailed) on the evening of the drama brought by the only survivor of this murderous enterprise was not expected this Wednesday, February 9, 2022. But on the occasion of the 79th day of the November 13 trial, which is held in the capital, the terrorist was still at the heart of the debates. Because this Wednesday and Thursday, the court is interested in the switch to terrorism of this Frenchman, now 32 years old, known to have been a party animal in his youth, and to understand what made him change. The questions asked at the hearing relate only to what happened before August 6, 2015. If he first declared “hesitating[r] whether I should answer the questions”, Salah Abdeslam did not end up shutting himself up in the silence he had during the five years of investigation. Quite the contrary. He was even rather talkative, expressing himself perfectly, without aggressiveness and in a polite way, even quoting Voltaire in the preamble.
“I did not kill anyone” clears Salah Abdeslam
Throughout Wednesday, Salah Abdeslam attempted to downplay his role. “I wanted to say that I didn’t kill anyone and I didn’t hurt anyone. Even a scratch, I didn’t do it,” he said, insisting that he “didn’t [a] not the intention”, even saying “to suffer”. What to make one of the lawyers of the civil parties jump, although the accused has tempered: “I will not compare”. While adding: “I frequented cafes like that, well connected, I put on a shirt, I was perfumed… There is a moment of doubt to blow yourself up”.
If he, as at the start of the trial, blamed François Hollande, then President of the Republic – “it was to stop the coalition’s bombings on Islamic State soil” -, Salah Abdeslam spoke a lot about the terrorist organization, which he joined “as soon as I heard about the IS fighting”. Why did he join it? “In many Arab, Muslim countries, Western values take precedence over Islamic values. And for us Muslims, it is a humiliation. The Islamic State fights in the path of Allah so that his word is the highest , so that order is restored on earth. And me, this fight, I legitimize it”, he asserted. But Salah Abdeslam assured that he never went to Syria, only that it “crossed his mind”, evoking a “dead end”, torn between his convictions and the presence of his parents and his fiancée in Belgium.
On the other hand, his brother, Brahim, who blew himself up on boulevard Voltaire on November 13, 2015, went to Syria in 2015, just before the attacks in Paris. Salah Abdeslam said he did not know about it immediately: “I thought he was in Turkey. After a few months, he told me he had gone to Syria”. On whose instructions? To do what? No explanation was given. But the project of the attacks would have “come from Syria” according to his words.
Watched 24 hours a day in prison, Salah Abdeslam also made a suspicious speech when talking about Abdelhamid Abaaoud, one of the logisticians of November 13: “He’s my brother, he’s no longer there. He’s someone ‘one that I loved very much and I hope that soon I will join him”. Before assuring that he is “not suicidal.
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Salah Abdeslam is now one of the 20 people who are on trial in the trial opened since Wednesday September 8, 2021 and which must last until May 25, 2022, with an exceptional organization. 1,800 people have joined as civil parties, more than 300 lawyers are expected to follow one another and a 750m² room that can accommodate 550 people has been specifically built for the hearing, in the former Paris courthouse, at a cost of 7.5 millions of euros.
Before the special assize court, chaired by Jean-Louis Péries, the defendants, including Salah Abdeslam, incur up to life imprisonment. 13 other people are tried, suspected of having participated in the organization of the deadliest attacks ever perpetrated in France. Finally, six people will be judged without being present. The majority would be dead.
One thing is certain: Salah Abdeslam was indeed in Paris the evening of the attacks. After leaving a pavilion located in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), it was he who, shortly before 9 p.m., dropped off the first three suicide bombers from Saint-Denis, destined to blow themselves up inside the Stade de France during the France-Germany friendly match. When security refused to let them in, they finally activated their mechanisms on the forecourt, killing one person and injuring a dozen others.
Meanwhile, Salah Abdeslam went to the 18th arrondissement of Paris, north of the capital, to leave his car there, a Clio. After wandering around the Barbès district, he took the metro to the southern Parisian suburbs of Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine), getting rid of his explosive belt, discovered a few days later by municipal employees. He then went to the neighboring town of Châtillon (Hauts-de-Seine) and spent the night in a stairwell on the Allée Vauban, after buying something to eat at McDonald’s, located nearby. During the evening, he will chat with young people in the stairwell, whose eyes were riveted on the news channels continuously. The next morning, accomplices recover him and exfiltrate him to Belgium, despite three roadblocks.
Significant gray areas hover over the file. Was Salah Abdeslam supposed to blow himself up in the 18and borough ? The statement claiming the attacks sent by ISIS the day after the massacre mentioned the neighborhood as having been attacked. However, the borough was spared that evening. Why didn’t Salah Abdeslam activate his explosive belt? Should he just leave the car behind? The mystery remains intact and the elements available to investigators diverge.
According to him, Salah Abdeslam would have given up on his own. But according to the expertise carried out on the material found in the street, its mechanism would have been defective. Did he still try to activate the system? Impossible to know. Mute since the beginning of the investigation, Salah Abdeslam will be able, on his own, to enlighten the judges.
She is the one who will defend Salah Abdeslam for more than eight months: Master Olivia Ronen. Also 31 years old, the lawyer at the Paris Bar was chosen by the accused himself. This is not the first time that the one who was sworn in in 2016 has embarked on a terrorism-related file. After the attack of July 14, 2016 on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, the lawyer had defended one of the indicted, who ended up committing suicide in his cell. Me Ronen also defended Erwan Guillard, a former French soldier who had joined the Islamic State. With Martin Vettes, she had already acquitted a homeless man tried for violence that led to death without intention to give it, in December 2017 in a refuge in the 13th arrondissement who had subsequently spent nearly three and a half years. behind bars. They have also collaborated on other assize cases.
Martin Vettes, 32, will also defend Salah Abdeslam for several months. Mainly involved in litigation and criminal law, he has been a lawyer at the Paris Bar since 2016. Holder of a degree in political science and another in philosophy, he completed a Masters II in criminal law and criminal policy in Europe at Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris I). With Olivia Ronen, he had already acquitted a homeless man tried for violence resulting in death without intention to give it, in December 2017 in a refuge in the 13th arrondissement who had subsequently spent nearly three and a half years. behind bars. They have both also collaborated on several other assize files.
A night of horror in the heart of Paris. On Friday November 13, 2015, the French football team faces Germany in a friendly match at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis. The enclosure is full, the President of the Republic François Hollande is present. As the match has just started, three men try to enter the bays but are turned back by the security service. They are three suicide bombers equipped with explosive belts. Around 9:20 p.m., they then activated the mechanism on the forecourt, killing a man and seriously injuring a dozen people. At the same time, a commando armed with Kalashnikovs opened fire on the terraces of several cafes in the 10and and 11and districts of the capital. 39 people are killed. It was then that a third group entered the Bataclan, having shot people outside the performance hall. 90 people lose their lives in the middle of a concert eagles of death metal, an American hard rock band. A hostage-taking also took place, but the police forces managed to evacuate the remaining people without any new victims, killing the three assailants. After the assaults, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for these coordinated attacks.