This Monday, December 5 will open the trial of the Brussels attacks. In the box of the accused will appear Salah Abdeslam. Sentenced to lifetime sentence during the trial of the Paris attacks, he will have to answer for the assassination in a terrorist context of 32 people during the attacks of Zaventem and Maelbeek on March 22, 2016.
After his appearance in court during the trial which lasted ten months in the former Paris Courthouse, Salah Abdeslam “evolved”, assures Me Delphine Paci, who will defend him before the Brussels Assize Court. “Being confronted with the victims changes everything for someone who has been in total solitary confinement for six years.”
Insulted over the phone
How does a lawyer react when approached to defend Salah Abdeslam. For his part, Me Paci says he hesitated over the logistics of this “mammoth trial”.
“When I was approached I still thought a little, I asked the opinion of my relatives, in particular my five children and they all said to me: “You have to go”, says Me Michel Bouchat.
He testifies to having received insults via messages left on his answering machine. “That’s not going to change my way of being or […] how I will defend Salah Abdeslam.”
“It’s democracy that there is to win”
“At the level of the defense of interests and all the more so in a trial where the person is accused for something that he did not do, whether his name is Salah Abdeslam or not, there is no of reason that she is condemned for that. So […] I went there almost immediately”, insists Me Paci
The two lawyers believe they have nothing to gain in this unprecedented trial in Belgium. “It is above all democracy that there is to gain from it,” she concludes. And his colleague to assure that “the concern is that he be condemned with fairness”.
