Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
The sole surviving member of an Islamic State terror cell responsible for the devastating 2015 Paris attacks has been found guilty of murder by a French court and sentenced to life in prison.
Salah Abdeslam, 32, was one of 10 ISIS extremists involved in the attack that killed 130 people and injuried more than 500.
The attacks on the Bataclan theatre, Stade de France and other venues were collectively considered the worst peace-time atrocity in modern French history.
Abdeslam, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was captured alive by police four months after the bloodbath at the Bataclan concert hall and other locations.
His sentence, the toughest possible in a French court, was read out by the head of a five-judge panel overseeing the trial of 20 men accused of involvement in the assault on the capital.
Wearing a khaki-coloured polo shirt, Abdeslam stood motionless and showed no emotion as he was declared guilty and sentenced by chief judge Louis Peries during an hour-long speech.The other 19 suspects, accused of either plotting or offering logistical support, were also found guilty, with their sentences ranging from two years to life in prison.
The other nine attackers involved in the attack either blew themselves up or were killed by police during or after the assault.
Hundreds of victims and witnesses packed out the benches of the specially constructed courtroom as the sentences were read out.
“My first reaction is that we have the feeling of turning a page after the verdicts,” Gerard Chemla, a lawyer representing victims at the trial, told reporters.
Abdeslam begun his appearances last September defiantly declaring himself as an “Islamic State fighter” but finished tearfully apologising to victims and asking for leniency.
In his final statemnt, he urged the judges not to give him a full-life term, seeking to emphasise that he had not personally killed anyone.
“I made mistakes, it’s true. But I’m not a murderer, I’m not a killer,” he said. His lawyers also argued against the whole-life sentence, which prosecutors had demanded.
It offers only a small chance of parole after 30 years and has been pronounced only four times previously since being created in 1994.
Abdeslam discarded his suicide belt on the night of the attack and fled back to his hometown, Brussels, where many of the extremists lived.
