“The biggest criminal trial ever organized in France is coming to an end”écrit The Guardian overseas. Friday, June 10, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) requested incompressible life imprisonment against Salah Abdeslam and for nine others of the twenty accused. “No mercy for the living, highlighted The Free Belgium, nor for the presumed dead”since the sanction also concerns “the absents”, on the run or presumed missing.
This is the case, for example, of Osama Atar, “considered as ‘the mastermind and the organizer’ of the attacks which left 130 dead and hundreds injured on November 13, 2015”. The incompressible perpetuity is “the maximum penalty in French criminal law”, specifies the title, and the sanction has been “accompanied by long security sentences which prevent any early release from prison”.
An “implacable and meticulous” indictment
The Belgian daily The evening greets the sorrows “differentiated, legally argued at the end of an indictment-marathon, as implacable as it is meticulous”. The prosecution requested “different sentences against those who were an integral part of the commandos (Ayari, Krayem), those who were prevented before taking action (Usman, Haddadi, Dahmani), against logisticians (Bakkali, Atar, Asufi, Kharkhach) or against the absentees supposedly dead in Syria”.
The only survivor of the terrorist commando, recalls the title, had meanwhile “surprised at the hearing by declaring that he had to blow himself up in a café in the 18th arrondissement of Paris”, suitor “having given up at the last moment”.
The floor “did not believe in this version that arose ‘by the magic of the audience’”, and it is the incompressible life sentence that was required against Salah Abdeslam.
“The colossal sum of suffering”
On the penalties required, Advocate General Camille Hennetier told the court:
“The penalties must reflect the colossal sum of the sufferings.”
The latter also expressed regret about the gray areas that remain after nine months of hearings: “During the trial, there was this hope that the defendants would speak […]that they return to our world, but they were committed to a deadly ideology.”
The French judges, adds Free, “are convinced that other attacks must have been committed by the same group”and believe that Osama Krayem and Sofien Ayari “were on a mission to carry out an attack on the same day at Schipol airport in Amsterdam”.
Fanaticism, “incurable disease”
“In the eyes of the prosecution, relate The evening, the past of the defendants in no way lessens their responsibility”. And the newspaper again quotes the Advocate General, who declared before the court:
“They did not grow up in misery and all enjoyed what they describe as a happy and uneventful childhood. They had all the cards in hand to succeed”.
Addressing the main defendant, Camille Hennetier added:
“Since Salah Abdeslam likes to quote Voltaire, I will please him: ‘Once fanaticism has permeated the brains, the disease is incurable’.”
The November 13 trial is now entering its final phase, the defense pleadings. Salah Abdeslam’s two lawyers will be the last to plead on June 24, and the verdict is expected on June 29.