© Benoit PEYRUCQ
This courtroom sketch produced on February 9, 2022 shows the defendant Salah Abdeslam standing in front of the Paris special assize court during the trial of the November 2015 attacks which left 130 dead at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, in bars , restaurants and in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris
Will Salah Abdeslam remain silent once once more? The main defendant at the trial of November 13 is questioned on Wednesday for the last time, on the hours following the attacks which he said he had “given up” and on his run for four months.
During his previous interrogation, on March 30, the only surviving member of the jihadist commandos who killed 130 people in Paris and Saint-Denis had surprised and disappointed a packed house, deciding, for the first time in seven months to hearing, to exercise his right to remain silent.
The special assize court of Paris was then to question him on this night of terror, if he had indeed “backtracked” by not activating his explosive belt as he had hinted six weeks earlier.
But she waited in vain for the fuller explanations promised then. Just Salah Abdeslam agreed to reaffirm that he had “given up” his explosive vest and that he had hidden it near a trash can.
His last interrogation must focus on his schedule on the evening of November 13, 2015, when Paris sinks into dread and amazement.
At 9:59 p.m., Salah Abdeslam abandoned in a square in the 18th arrondissement of Paris the car with which he conveyed the three suicide bombers from the Stade de France, still equipped with his explosive vest.
Explosions have already sounded in front of the sports enclosure, three men, including Salah Abdeslam’s older brother, Brahim, machine-gunned the terraces east of Paris and the Bataclan massacre began twelve minutes ago.
Was Salah Abdeslam considering “something else”? The press release from the Islamic State (IS) organization mentions an attack in the 18th arrondissement of the capital, and he is the only member of the commandos to have gone there.
Could he have aimed for the metro as suggested by a file found in a computer in a Brussels hideout?
Salah Abdeslam then called several of his “buddies” in Brussels, Mohammed Amri then Hamza Attou, today his co-defendants, to come and pick him up and bring him back to Belgium.
– “Tenth man” –
Interviewed on Tuesday, the two men regretted the “mistake” of a lifetime, repeating that they had “no time” suspected that their “friend” from the Brussels municipality of Molenbeek was involved in the attacks.
Mohammed Amri is contacted first, around 10:30 p.m. “He told me that he had had a dirty + crash + (of car, editor’s note), that he was in France – he did not say Paris, I specify – and that I had to come and get him”, he assured in the box.
The latter refuses, but Salah Abdeslam insists. When Mohammed Amri leaves his job at Samu social in Brussels at 2 a.m., he takes to the road with Hamza Attou.
The only surviving member of the commandos then joined Châtillon, south of Paris, where he waited in a stairwell, engaging in discussion with two teenagers.
He is recovered in the early morning by Mohammed Amri and Hamza Attou.
In the car, Salah Abdeslam tells them that he “lied” to make them come, “that the attacks are them” and that he is the “tenth man”. That he “had to blow himself up but it didn’t work”.
According to Mohammed Amri, he also told them “that he had gone into a cafe, that there were only young people and that he gave up”.
“Shocked” by what they had heard, neither Mohammed Amri nor Hamza Attou will denounce Salah Abdeslam. They will be arrested on November 14, 2015. The man they went looking for will only be arrested on March 18, 2016, following four months on the run.
During their interrogation on Tuesday, Salah Abdeslam discussed at length and ostensibly with his cubicle neighbor, being called to order by the president of the court.
On the second day of the trial, September 9, Salah Abdeslam had cleared Mohammed Amri, Hamza Attou and a third co-defendant, Ali Oulkadi. “They did me a favor when they knew nothing at all,” said the Frenchman, now 32 years old.
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