A man believed to be the last surviving member of the terrorist cell that mounted the deadly Paris attacks of November 2015 went on trial Monday, lashing out at prosecutors but ultimately refusing to answer questions.
BRUSSELS — Salah Abdeslam, believed to be the last surviving member of the terrorist cell that mounted the deadly Paris attacks of November 2015, went on trial Monday, lashing out at prosecutors but ultimately refusing to answer questions.
“My silence does not make me a criminal; it’s my defense,” he said.
Authorities are hoping the case will clarify unanswered questions about the wave of recent violence that has rocked Europe. Technically, Abdeslam, 28, is standing trial in Brussels for an incident that happened four months after a coordinated series of Islamic State-orchestrated assaults across Paris killed 130 people. Belgian prosecutors are trying him for his alleged role in a Brussels shooting in March 2016, when Abdeslam was still a fugitive from the Paris attacks, Europe’s most wanted man.
Four police officers were injured in the Brussels shooting, which occurred during a joint Franco-Belgian investigation into the Paris attacks. Abdeslam’s co-defendant in the trial is Sofien Ayari, 24, a Tunisian who authorities say was with Abdeslam during the Brussels shooting.
Abdeslam was arrested two days after that shooting, in Molenbeek, a heavily immigrant district of the Belgian capital. Abdeslam, who grew up in Brussels, had eluded French and Belgian authorities for months. The lengthy manhunt came under intense public scrutiny — especially after the attacks on the Brussels metro and airport that killed 32 people on March 22, 2016, two days after Abdeslam’s arrest.
Questions still remain about the extent of the relationship between the Paris and Brussels attacks and about whether Abdeslam’s arrest precipitated the assault on the Belgian capital. The trial on Monday gave the public the first opportunity to learn the narrative of a complicated chain of events that prosecutors have been piecing together for more than a year.
On a general level, the trial also presents an early opportunity to prosecute an individual suspected in a spate of attacks either organized or inspired by the Islamic State in recent years. Nice, Berlin and Barcelona have all suffered similar violent incidents in the years since, although none as deadly as Paris.
On Monday, Ayari told the court he had fought for the Islamic State in Syria.
Abdeslam momentarily broke the silence he has kept since his arrest. While he declined to answer any questions, he told Judge Marie-France Keutgen that Muslims are “treated in the worst ways, mercilessly.” He then implored the prosecution to make a case based on “forensic and tangible evidence” and not to “swagger about to satisfy public opinion.”