Terror suspect skips court
PARIS — A Belgian court said Tuesday that the sole surviving suspect in the November 2015 attacks on Paris refused to reappear in a trial that victims had hoped would shed light on the Islamic State network that later struck Brussels.
Once Europe’s most-wanted man, Salah Abdeslam appeared Monday, defying the court and refusing to answer any questions about the March 2016 shootout with police in Brussels that led to his capture. He informed the court he didn’t wish to return for the next hearing.
Where Abdeslam has refused to discuss his role in the Paris attack or the network of killers who targeted Brussels four months later, defendants in a separate trial in France were only too happy to talk about their criminal backgrounds, which they insisted had nothing to do with terrorism.
In closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutor Nicolas Le Bris seemed largely to agree. Jawad Bendaoud and Mohamed Soumah rented out a squat to the commander of the leader of the Islamic State cell and an accomplice until a police standoff that collapsed the building and killed the fugitives.
The trial is the first in France related to the attacks, which killed 130 people.
Bendaoud and Soumah enthusiastically explained the life of a confirmed street criminal, and how they managed to overlook the links between the Belgians desperate for a hiding place and the attack that had just killed 130 people in their city.
In requesting a four-year term for Bendaoud and Soumah, rather than the six-year maximum, Le Bris said they knew they were hiding criminals, but that there wasn’t sufficient evidence they knew the strangers were involved in the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks, much less that one of them was the ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
“In putting too big a suit on Jawad Bendaoud, you risk making Abaaoud less credible, and that’s a real danger,” Le Bris said.
Patrick Jardin, whose daughter Nathalie died in the Bataclan concert hall, said he was disappointed in the prosecutor’s request.
“They are accomplices with the people who killed my daughter. Justice should have no pity on people like that,” Jardin said.
Abdeslam, who has been imprisoned in France in solitary confinement, informed the court he didn’t wish to return for a hearing later in the week.