Brussels attacks: Abdeslam, who faces life imprisonment, calls for a “fair” verdict

“I ask you to be fair in this final decision. » Salah Abdeslam, who faces a new life prison sentence at the trial for the 2016 jihadist attacks in Brussels, asked the Assize Court for a “fair” verdict, Monday September 11, on the last day of the proceedings. Refusing to be “demonized” and seen as “a symbol of jihad”, he repeated that he did not participate in the attacks perpetrated on March 22, 2016 at the airport and in the Brussels metro (35 dead).

Arrested on March 18, 2016 in the Belgian capital, the only surviving member of the commandos who attacked Paris on November 13, 2015 (130 dead) proclaims his innocence, because he was in prison on March 22. But the argument was swept aside at trial by the prosecution.

Prosecutors considered that he had knowingly participated in the preparation of the suicide attacks, demanding life imprisonment against him for “assassinations in a terrorist context”.

These attacks, claimed like those in Paris by the Islamic State organization, led to Abdeslam being tried with six other men, including his childhood friend Mohamed Abrini. All could be decided on their fate before the end of the week.

This extraordinary trial opened in December 2022 involved ten men in total. But two of them were acquitted on July 25 when the jury returned a first verdict on guilt. During sentencing discussions this month, life imprisonment was sought for Abdeslam, Abrini and four other murder defendants.

One of them, Ali El Haddad Asufi, collapsed, holding his head in his hands, during the indictment. “I am not a murderer,” he tremblingly proclaimed on Monday during his last speech. “I destroyed my life […] How could I be so stupid, so blind? » added this friend of Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the jihadists who died in a suicide bomber on March 22, 2016, for whom he was one of the main logistical supporters in the preceding months.

In June 2022 in Paris, Salah Abdeslam was sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment, the heaviest sentence in the French Penal Code, for his participation in the November 13 attacks.