A last chance to convince the court: at the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in France, Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers began to plead on Friday afternoon for the only surviving member of the commandos, with the hope of avoiding him life imprisonment.
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The national anti-terrorism prosecution (Pnat) demanded against the 32-year-old Frenchman the heaviest sentence of the Penal Code, incompressible life imprisonment.
This sanction, rarely requested and pronounced only four times, makes the possibility of a release minimal.
The public prosecutor had justified it “in view of the immense gravity of the facts”, but also of the personality of the main accused. He “remains convinced of not having killed anyone” and has adopted “a strategy of constant minimization of the facts, that is to say the change that he has yet to go through”, had advanced the Pnat.
The first of the 32-year-old Frenchman’s lawyers to stand up asks the court to go beyond the “certainties” with which many had arrived at the start of the trial, about the one who remained silent during the six years of ‘investigation. Before speaking widely during the trial.
So beyond the case, the court will have to ask itself a question after these nine months of hearing, asks Me Vettes: “Will one day this man be able to return to society, or is he definitively lost? »
In the box, Salah Abdeslam, white polo shirt with short sleeves and crossed arms, listens attentively.
Remained silent during almost all of the instruction, the “tenth man” of the jihadist commandos who killed 130 people in Paris and Saint-Denis, in the Paris region, did not stop during the debates to affirm that he had “given up” killing on the evening of November 13, refusing “out of humanity” to activate his explosive belt.
Without convincing the prosecution, which criticized the selective speech of the accused.
“I am certain, whatever people say, that this trial would not have been the same at all if Salah Abdeslam had remained silent, and that there would have been a deep sense of collective failure if such had been the case”, affirms Me Vettes.
Salah Abdeslam who had proudly claimed, on the first day of the trial on September 8, his membership of the Islamic State, had concluded his last interrogation, in mid-April, by shedding tears and apologizing “to all the victims”.
“Spontaneous and sincere” tears, argues his lawyer. “There was no tear strategy of the defense”.
He also deplored in February the “extremely severe” sentences for terrorism. “The people who did not kill anyone, we cannot condemn them as if we had the heads of the Islamic State, it is not possible”, he had estimated.
“I present no danger to society,” he added without batting an eyelid.
“Our only ambition is to show you that this sentence is disproportionate,” said his lawyer.
The defense of Salah Abdeslam, who admitted certain round trips to Europe to recover the commandos returning from Syria, the rental of cars and apartments, will not plead acquittal. But she should insist before the special Assize Court of Paris on this “waiver”, which did not convince the prosecution, and the possible amendment of their client.
Since the beginning of defense pleadings on June 13, lawyers for defendants against whom life imprisonment has been requested for “complicity” – with 30 or 22 years of security – have warned the court against the temptation of a ” exceptional justice” with “elimination” sentences in response to mass crimes, the worst ever committed on French soil.
“Justice is not a weapon of anger”, urged Me Marie Violleau, one of the lawyers of Mohamed Abrini, “planned” for November 13 but who had given up, as he will do a few months later. in Brussels.
Before delivering its verdict on Wednesday at the end of the day, the court will give the floor one last time to the 14 defendants tried in their presence – six are by default – Monday morning.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca