The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office has requested incompressible life imprisonment for Salah Abdeslam, following the trial on the November 13 attacks.
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) on Friday demanded the maximum planned, incompressible life imprisonment, against Salah Abdeslam, the only member still alive of the November 13 commandos who caused the death of 130 people in Paris and Saint Denis.
These are “heavy, very heavy sentences” that the prosecution will demand, warns Advocate General Camille Hennetier from the outset, after an indictment-marathon carried with his colleagues Nicolas Braconnay and Nicolas Le Bris.
Against Salah Abdeslam, the only defendant in the box tried as a co-author of the jihadist attacks which “frightened” and “stunned” France, the public prosecutor is asking for the heaviest sanction provided for by the penal code, pronounced at only four times.
The incompressible life sentence makes the possibility for those who are sentenced to it of obtaining an adjustment of the sentence very small.
Salah Abdeslam did not “give up” but “tried to blow his belt” on the evening of November 13, and has “the blood of all the victims on his hands”, estimated the Pnat.
The 32-year-old Frenchman, who “remains convinced that he did not kill anyone” and was “unable to express the slightest remorse”, adopted “a strategy of constant minimization of the facts, that is to say the path he he still has to go”, justified the prosecution by requesting this extremely rare sentence.
Against the “accomplices” of the attacks, all members of the same jihadist cell whose commandos were “interchangeable”, the Pnat also demanded life imprisonment, asking that the security period be modeled according to their degree of involvement. .
Thirty years of security were thus claimed against the Swede Osama Krayem and the Tunisian Sofien Ayari, two “seasoned fighters” of the Islamic State who, according to the accusation, were to carry out an attack at Amsterdam airport on 13 -November and who turned back because of an “unforeseen”.
Their silence at the hearing should only be interpreted “as a contempt for your court, especially on the part of two men who, in the box, are those who know the most about the cell”, scolded Camille Hennetier.
Life required for the five sponsors and logisticians presumed dead
The anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office has requested life imprisonment with 22 years of security against two key men, Mohamed Abrini, “the man in the hat” of the Brussels attacks who was also “planned” in Paris but gave up, and the “logistician” Mohamed Bakkali, “central room” of the cell.
All these defendants have shown themselves “unable to condemn” the attacks, the deadliest ever committed in France. For them, “the victims, it’s sad, but it’s a necessary, collateral evil”, overwhelmed the general counsel.
Against the “disgruntled operational staff”, the Algerian Adel Haddadi and the Pakistani Muhammad Usman, who, having left Syria, were unable to reach Europe in time to participate in the attacks, the Pnat demanded the maximum penalty of twenty years. imprisonment with a two-thirds security period.
Sentences ranging from five years’ imprisonment to 16 years’ imprisonment have also been requested against seven other defendants tried since September by the specially composed Assize Court of Paris, and “involved to varying degrees” in the aid provided to the cell.
Life was also requested for the five sponsors and logisticians presumed to have died in Syria and tried in absentia, including Osama Atar, the “brain” of the attacks.
Against Ahmed Dahmani, detained in Turkey and tried in his absence, the prosecution demanded a sentence of thirty years’ imprisonment with a two-thirds security period.
The national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office also demanded that bans from the national territory, for ten years or definitive, be pronounced against all the defendants, with the exception of those who have French nationality, including Salah Abdeslam.
The specially composed assize court, composed solely of professional magistrates, is not required to follow the requisitions of the prosecution.
Addressing the court one last time, Advocate General Camille Hennetier said: “Your verdict will not heal the wounds, will not bring the dead back to life, but will ensure that justice is here. and the law who will have the last word”.
The floor will be given to the defense from Monday and for two weeks. The verdict is expected on June 29.