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Added on the 08/09/2021 14:07:43 - Copyright : France 24 EN
The biggest trial in France's modern history opens on Wednesday of 20 suspects charged over the November 2015 Paris attacks that saw 130 people killed, with an expected nine months of hearings set to reopen still raw wounds. The only surviving attacker, Salah Abdeslam, will be in the dock with 13 other defendants at a purpose-built facility in central Paris. FRANCE 24's International Affairs Editor Douglas Herbert tells us more.
Salah Abdeslam and 19 other men are in the dock, accused of playing critical roles in France's worst peacetime attacks.
Key suspect Salah Abdeslam has claimed that he bears no responsibility for the 130 people who were killed in the Paris terror attacks of November 2015. His testimony, during a terse exchange with magistrates, drew anger from survivors and their families, who've also been criticising the decision by defence lawyers to stage a walkout during Tuesday’s hearing. To discuss this and more, we're joined for Perspective by Arthur Dénouveaux, a survivor of the attack on the Bataclan and president of the Life for Paris association.
The last surviving suspected assailant in the deadly 2015 Paris attacks told a court Wednesday that he changed his mind about going through with the killings at the last moment. "The objective I was given was to go to a cafe in the 18th" district in northern Paris, Salah Abdeslam told the special Paris court hearing the case.
William Julié, Criminal and human rights lawyer, does not believe the aggressive stance Salah Abdeslam is taking at the trial will make any difference. "The course of justice will carry on without him." Mr. Julié points out that "nobody was expecting anything else ... he has not been saying anything from Day 1, and he has been complaining about what was happening to him in custody. He always has." Responding to concerns that many of the defendants might also take a defiant stance, thereby tarnishing the credibility of the system, Mr. Julié is not convinced that "they will all go the same way as Salah Abdeslam." Especially since not all of the defendants risk "life in prison, which is where (Abdeslam) is going, obviously."
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