For this first interrogation, scheduled over two days, the only member still alive of the commandos who killed 130 people in Paris and Saint-Denis will only be questioned about the period prior to September 2015.
The main enigmas in suspense concerning him – what was his exact mission, did he give up activating his explosive belt – will therefore have to wait for the next interrogations, already planned. The special Assize Court of Paris will for the time being be interested in the changeover to the radicalism of the 32-year-old Frenchman, who had the reputation of a “party animal”, a fan of casinos and nightclubs.
Salah Abdeslam should also be questioned about the stay in Syria of his brother Brahim – future killer of the Parisian terraces – at the beginning of 2015, and about his friend Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who will become the coordinator of the Parisian attacks. A “nice guy” with whom he had lost contact, he assured the Belgian police in February 2015. The court will finally try to shed light on a mysterious trip he himself made to Greece the following summer.
To these first series of questions, will Salah Abdeslam provide some answers? Since mid-February and the start of the interrogations of the 14 defendants present in court, two of them have already exercised their right to silence.
” Soldier “
Salah Abdeslam had remained silent during almost the entire investigation. He had spoken once to clear a co-accused, another to launch into a religious tirade.
But since the start of the trial, he has already made his position widely known: on the first day, by presenting himself as a “soldier” of the Islamic State, then later, by declaring that “November 13 was inevitable”, because of the French interventions in Syria. Before calling for “dialogue”, under the dismayed gaze of the civil parties.
At the beginning of November, during his so-called “personality” interrogation, he had agreed to answer most of the questions, and described his “simple” life before – without venting. A psychiatric expert considered that it was appropriate “to formally eliminate any mental illness” in Salah Abdeslam.
If he “expressed no regrets” and recites “like a parrot” the same arguments as all “radicalized subjects”, his “previous personality does not seem to have been buried”.
Sometimes virulent at first, Salah Abdeslam then “played the game” of the trial, according to the civil parties, even if he does not let anything show when we talk about him. He had just lowered his head when the wife of one of his co-defendants burst into tears during his hearing.