The French National Antiterrorist Prosecutor’s Office yesterday requested the harshest life sentence for Salah Abdeslam, the only terrorist still alive among the members of the commandos that attacked Paris on the night of November 13, 2015. The request used the legal term “real life”. , something very rare in the French system, since it practically rules out the possibility that the prisoner could be released on parole after a “security” period that is usually set at more than twenty years.
The public ministry justified the severity due to “the immense seriousness of the facts” and because Abdeslam, 32, has remained faithful to his jihadist ideology and has shown no remorse.
The same sentence was requested for two other members of the commando who have been tried in absentia because they were presumed dead in Iraq or Syria, in the area that was under the control of the Islamic State. These sentence requests have only a symbolic value, to demonstrate that French justice does not leave crimes unpunished. The 13-N attacks against the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France and various cafeterias caused 130 deaths and more than 400 injuries.
Another life sentence was claimed for the Belgian Mohamed Abrini, known as the man in the hat, who traveled to Paris on the day of the attacks but resigned at the last moment from participating in the action and returned to Brussels by taxi. For Abrini, however, the Prosecutor’s Office wants a security period of 22 years, beyond which, under certain conditions, the inmate could leave prison.
Life imprisonment is the most severe sentence imposed in France since the death penalty was abolished – by guillotine – in 1981, by decision of President François Mitterrand. Real life has been imposed in only four cases since 2007, all of them on perpetrators of crimes whose victims were children subjected to rape or torture.
