An appeals court in Brussels has prevented Belgian authorities from transferring terrorist Salah Abdeslam to France to continue serving his life term for the 2015 Paris attacks, citing the risk of breaching the European Convention of Human Rights.
Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the commando cell that carried out the 2015 attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris, was handed a life sentence in June 2022.
The following month French judicial authorities agreed to hand him over to Belgium to face trail for his role in the 2016 terror attacks in Brussels with the proviso that he would be returned once the trial was over.
In July this year, he was found guilty over the Brussels attacks and sentenced to 20 years in jail.
He was due to return to France by 12 October to continue serving his life term here.
But on Tuesday the Brussels appeals court said it was “temporarily” suspending the transfer over concerns there was a risk of breaching the European convention of human rights, which outlaws “inhuman and degrading” punishments and protects the right to family life.
Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers had argued that his whole-life sentence – which allows little chance of parole after 30 years and will likely mean he dies in jail – was inhumane and that his right to family life was breached since his relatives were all in Belgium, where he grew up.
'Slap in the face'
Lawyer Martin Vette welcomed the decision.
"It puts a real question mark on the compatibility of a whole-life sentence with fundamental rights, with the humanist idea that everyone must be able to reintegrate into society,” he told RFI.
“So this is a slap in the face for the French judiciary and in particular for the judges who delivered the 13 November trial verdict.”
But victims of the 13 November attacks are deeply perturbed by the decision.
“The hardest thing is that what we took for a completely definitive verdict … could in fact be challenged,” said Arthur Denouveaux, president of the Life for Paris victims’ support group.
Once a verdict has been pronounced, it’s important that it’s not revised over the years "so we can turn the page”, he told RFI.
Instead, the appeals court decision has “opened up the prospect of a sort of serial with multiple revisions and that’s very worrying for us”.
The case for the transfer will now be examined by another Brussels court but it could take months, even years, for the Belgian judiciary to reach a final decision.
