The Criminal Court of Paris has considered this Wednesday guilty the 20 defendants who have appeared for almost ten months for their involvement in the jihadist attacks of November 13, 2015 that caused 130 deaths and hundreds of injuries in the French capital.
The judges have found 19 of them guilty of all the charges for which they were accused, including Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the commandos that carried out the massacres in the Bataclan showroom, in various terraces of Paris and in the Stade de France of Saint Denis. The room has also sentenced another of the main defendants, Mohammed Abrini, to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years. However, the court has dropped the terrorism charge against Farid Kharkhach. Those convicted have a period of ten days to file an appeal.
Likewise, Abdeslam has been sentenced to life imprisonment, despite the efforts of his defense to present it as a “social death penalty” and after assuring that he gave up blowing himself up the night of the attack.
For the National Antiterrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT), the main defendant, arrested in Belgium on March 18, 2016 four days before the Brussels attacks (32 dead), did try to activate his explosives belt. “He has his hands stained with the blood of all the victims,” the representatives of the public ministry have assured.
“I am not a murderer and, if they condemn me for murder, they would commit an injustice,” the 32-year-old Frenchman said last Monday, who again presented his “apologies” to the survivors and the families of the victims.
“I am going to turn a huge page and, after this, life will start again. This is certain. There will be a later”, Aurélie Silvestre, who lost her partner in the Bataclan and whom the trial allowed him to “digest the drama”.
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