In a Paris courtroom this week, French prosecutors announced their intention to
seek the maximum penalty available in the trial of Salah Abdeslam. Abd





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French Prosecutors Seek Maximum Sentence For Key Suspect In 2015 Paris Attacks



(New York, N.Y.) — In a Paris courtroom this week, French prosecutors
announced theirintention
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to seek the maximum penalty available in the trial ofSalah Abdeslam
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life sentence without the possibility of parole for his role in the November
2015 Paris attacks which killed 130 people and wounded 350 others. ISIS claimed
responsibility for the deadly attacks. Abdeslam has been charged with
participating in and attempting murder in a terrorist context as well as being
active in a terrorist organization. He is the only surviving attacker.



Following the 2015 attacks, a rented vehicle under Abdeslam’s name was found
near the scene of the carnage at Paris’s Bataclan concert hall where gunmen
randomly fired on concertgoers with automatic weapons. Abdeslam is personally
implicated in attacks at a sports stadium just north of Paris where, as he
revealed to Belgian investigators in March 2016, he had planned to detonate a
suicide bomb but purportedly changed his mind. In 2018, a Belgian court
sentenced Abdeslam to 20 years in prison for attempted murder in relation to a
March 2016 shootout with police days before his arrest.



When asked to identify himself before a French court in September 2021,
Abdeslam recited the Islamic declaration of faith that Allah is God and
Mohammad is his servant. He further told the court he gave up his day job “to
become an Islamic State soldier
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.” In reference to his motivations for the attack, Abdeslam told the court that
the deaths of the attack victims were “nothing personal
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,” and that the killings were a response to French airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.



To read CEP’s resource Salah Abdeslam, please click here
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To read CEP’s resource France: Extremism & Terrorism, please click here
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