FILE: Reporters in special court room built for trial of men accused in 2015 IS attack
(Picture: AP)A Paris court will on Wednesday hand down verdicts over the 2015 terror attacks which killed 130 people after the biggest criminal trial in modern French history.
Twenty men are accused of critical roles in the coordinated attacks at the Bataclan theatre, the Stade de France, and cafes and restaurants on November 13, 2015. It is France’s deadliest peacetime attack.
Fourteen are being tried in person and six in-absentia, most of whom are presumed to be either dead or missing whilst fighting for IS in Syria.
The surviving Islamic State extremist who carried out the attacks, Salah Abdeslam, faces up to life in prison without parole on murder and other counts, the toughest sentence possible in the French justice system.
The 32-year-old was captured by police four months after the massacre, having fled back to his hometown, Brussels.
The others are largely accused of helping to facilitate the attacks by helping with logistics or transport.
The trial heard harrowing accounts from victims of the attacks, which also injured hundreds.
“The assassins, these terrorists, thought they were firing into the crowd, into a mass of people," said Dominique Kielemoes at the start of the trial in September 2021. Her son bled to death in one of the cafes.
Hearing the testimony of victims was "crucial to both their own healing and that of the nation," Ms Kielemoes said.
“It wasn’t a mass — these were individuals who had a life, who loved, had hopes and expectations," she said.
The sentence sought by prosecutors for Abdeslam of life in prison without parole has only been handed down four times in France, for crimes related to rape and murder of minors.
Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for nine other defendants. The remaining suspects were tried on lesser terrorism charges and face sentences ranging from five to 30 years.
In closing arguments, they said that all 20 defendants are members of Islamic State.
“Not everyone is a jihadi, but all of those you are judging accepted to take part in a terrorist group, either by conviction, cowardliness or greed," prosecutor Nicolas Braconnay told the court this month.
Abdeslam told the court that he was a last-minute addition to the group and claimed to renounce his mission to detonate a suicide vest in a bar in Paris that night.
But prosecutors emphasised contradictions in Abdeslam’s testimony.
He initially pledged allegiance to the Islamic State at the start of the trial and expressing regret that his explosives strapped to his body failed to detonate, before saying he deliberately disabled his vest because he did not want to kill people “singing and dancing”.
In closing arguments on Monday, Abdelslam’s lawyer argued he is the only one in the group of attackers who didn’t set off explosives to kill others that night.
"If a life sentence without hope for ever experiencing freedom again is pronounced, I fear we have lost a sense of proportion," Olivia Ronen said.
However, she emphasised she was “not providing legitimacy to the attacks" by defending her client.
Abdeslam apologised to the victims at his final court appearance Monday, claiming his apology was sincere.
“I have made mistakes, it’s true, but I am not a murderer, I am not a killer,” he said.
