The attacks, for which ISIL claimed responsibility, left 130 people killed and 494 wounded in the French capital – in bars, restaurants, in a concert hall and in front of the famous Stade de France, where a football match was held.
Abdeslam, 32, was found guilty of all five charges. He is only the fifth person in France to be sentenced to life without parole since it was legalized in 1994.
Although Abdeslam was one of 20 convicted, he was the only defendant charged with physically carrying out the deadliest attacks France has ever seen in peacetime.
The other suspects were charged with lesser crimes, such as helping to supply the attackers with weapons or cars. Six were tried in absentia.
Of the accused, 19 were found guilty on all charges, while one – Farid Harhach – was convicted on only two of the charges he faced. The remaining 13 defendants in the courtroom were sentenced to 2 to 30 years in prison for their crimes.
Abdeslam does not seem to react to his sentence. Harhach, who received the lightest sentence, cried when he heard his sentence.
The sentences are the culmination of a lengthy trial that began on September 8, 2021 and involved more than 330 lawyers and approximately 1,800 civil countries, according to the French Ministry of Justice. The proceedings took place in a specially built courtroom in the Palais des Justice in central Paris.
In the process, testimonies were heard from those who responded, describing the horrors they witnessed in the Bataclan concert hall and in the city’s bars and restaurants. The survivors spoke of their despair as they tried to hide from the terrorists, and family members of those killed recalled how their anxiety turned to grief when they learned of the deaths of their loved ones. Abdeslam, who was arrested in 2016, spoke publicly for the first time at the start of the trial, defiantly declaring himself an “Islamic State soldier”, upsetting some survivors who took his words as a threat. Abdeslam later apologized to the victims and claimed he had not killed anyone.
He says he chose not to blow up his vest with explosives and on the last day of court hearings urged the court not to give him a harsh sentence: “I made mistakes, it’s true, but I’m not a murderer, I’m not a murderer,” he said. he.
Many of the survivors and families of the dead hope to continue their lives after the long trial.
Life for Paris, the main organization for survivors and victims’ families, announced on Tuesday that the organization would begin to close down and eventually close on November 13, 2025, the tenth anniversary of the attacks.
“(Dissolution) is also for us to return to a certain form of normalcy, of our own free will, away from public attention,” the group said in a statement.
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