They will face the heaviest penalty of the French penal code.
Salah Abdeslam’s two lawyers, Mes Martin Vettes then Olivia Ronen, will plead on Friday for the defense of their client, the only member of the November 13 terrorist commandos who killed 130 people that evening in Paris and Saint-Denis. They will try to make him avoid the sentence of life imprisonment, with an incompressible security period, which was required by the general attorneys.
The task looks heavy. Judged as a “co-perpetrator” of the attacks which are considered a single crime scene, Salah Abdeslam, 32, must answer for 130 aggravated murders. According to the public prosecutor, “Salah Abdeslam has the blood of all the victims on his conscience, one of the three general attorneys. It’s as if he had their blood on his hands. »
“I want to be forgotten forever”
Almost silent during the six years of investigation, the main defendant of the trial of November 13 had proclaimed himself “fighter of the Islamic State” at the opening of the trial, chaining provocations before showing more control Over the month. He finally delivered a version of the facts in which he claims to have “given up” at the last moment to blow himself up in a café in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, “out of humanity”. But this one did not really convince.
“I don’t want people to remember me, I want to be forgotten forever, he said during his last speech before apologizing, in tears, to the civil parties: “I ask you to hate in moderation,” he told them. He had concluded with these words: “If I have done good to a single victim, it is a victory. »
The hearing is scheduled to start at 12:30 p.m.
The verdict is expected on Wednesday.