Abdeslam, a 32-year-old French citizen born in Brussels, was found guilty of taking part in a series of bombings and shootings across the French capital that killed 130 people and injured more than 490. The attacks blamed on Islamic State began when suicide bombers struck outside a national sports stadium on the night of Friday, November 13, 2015, followed by shootings and suicide bombings targeting cafes and restaurants. Finally, a gun attack on the Bataclan Theater during an Eagles of Death Metal rock concert killed 90 people. Following the largest criminal trial ever conducted in France, a panel of judges found Abdeslam guilty of terrorism. Abdeslam was sentenced to life in prison, the most severe sentence that can be imposed under French law. It offers only a small chance of release after 30 years. Salah Abdeslam. For 10 months in a specially built and heavily guarded courthouse, hundreds of people who survived the deadliest peacetime attack on French soil gave shocking details of their ordeal – from dragging corpses to Bataclan to being held hostage by gunmen there or to fire Kalashnikovs at restaurant sidewalk tables. Nine of the 10 men who hit the city died that night, either committing suicide or being shot dead by police – including Abdeslam’s older brother Brahim, who detonated an explosive vest at a Paris bar. Abdeslam was the only survivor. He went to a bar in northern Paris, but later threw his explosive vest in a bucket and later invited friends to pick him up and take him back to Brussels. For months he hid in Brussels – where he grew up – avoiding one of the largest manhunt in Europe. He was arrested in March 2016 after an exchange of gunfire with Belgian police in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean. Days after his arrest, bombers suspected of being part of the same terrorist unit hit Brussels airport and the city’s metro, killing 32 and injuring hundreds. Investigators in Paris said Abdeslam intended to blow himself up in a Paris bar on the night of the November 13, 2015 attacks, but that his explosive vest was defective. He claimed he did it back at the last minute. He was accused of providing vital planning and logistical support, as well as leaving suicide bombers at the Stade de France early in the night. Abdeslam remained silent for years after his arrest in 2016. Prosecutors have highlighted the contradictions in Abdeslam’s testimony in the special court in Paris. At the beginning of the trial, he had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State and expressed his regret that the explosives attached to his body were not detonated. He later said he had changed his mind when he arrived at a bar in Paris and deliberately turned off his vest because he did not want to kill people who were “singing and dancing” on a night out. He said that his older brother, whom he always tried to imitate and impress, had asked him in the summer of 2015 to gather the Islamic State fighters returning to Europe from Syria and bring them to Brussels. Prosecutors dismissed as false allegations that he had been persuaded to join the unit just two days before the attacks. Abdeslam’s behavior changed during the 10-month trial. In April, he apologized to the victims in court and asked them to “hate me in moderation.” In his last words in court on Monday, he said he had “evolved”. He referred to his prison conditions in solitary confinement, saying it was a “shock” at first to face so many people in court. But now he felt “calm” because he had managed to find an “assimilation” of “social life” by being taken from his cell to court. “I have made mistakes, but I am not a murderer. I am not a murderer. “If you convict me of murder, you will commit an injustice,” Abdeslam told the court this week. “My first words are for the victims. I have already said sorry. “Some will say that my apology is insincere, that it is a strategy; more than 130 dead, more than 400 victims, who can sincerely apologize for so much suffering?” During the final hearing Monday, Abdelslam’s lawyer Olivia Ronen told the judges that her client was the only one in the group who did not detonate explosives to kill others that night. He cannot be convicted of murder, he argued. Abdeslam had told the court that “it is not a danger to society.” Prosecutors had argued that full life imprisonment was justified, saying that restoring Abdeslam back to society seemed impossible because of his “deadly ideology”. During the trial, Abdeslam was asked by a lawyer how he would like to be remembered. “I do not want to be remembered,” he said. “I want to be forgotten forever. I did not choose to be the person I am today. “
