Chapter 28
1. The confession
The idea is to postpone as long as possible the moment when he understood that it was an attack.
Going to Hungary or Germany to pick up the jihadists was humanitarian repatriation.
What Abdeslam wanted was to go to Syria.
Brahim, his brother, told him that he would be more useful here, that France did not stop fighting the Muslims, humiliating them, underestimating them, and that whoever agreed to be
chahid
, "martyr", had direct entry into paradise.
But it was not until November 11 that he introduced Abdelhamid Abaaoud, in the safe house in Charleroi, who told him something much more specific: they had chosen him to use, two days later, an explosive belt and to blow it up in an attack.
Was he recruited to replace Abrini, as he claims?
Neither Abdeslam nor Abrini are going to clarify this point for us.
"You don't have to believe everything Abrini says," says Abdeslam, "but sometimes he tells the truth."
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Lately the two give the impression that they are trying to steal the spotlight from each other.
In any case, Abdeslam is shocked.
But he allows himself to be convinced.
Until the night of November 11-12 he does not understand that he will not be able to do it, that he does not have faith in the ideal, that he is not going to kill anyone.
The same thing that Abrini also says or pretends to say.
But he is already on the slide.
The convoy of death rolls towards Paris.
The one driving the Clio is Abdeslam.
In the back seat Brahim writes SMS.
Abrini is silent.
At Bobigny's chalet they give him the explosive belt, but they don't talk about what they're going to do the next day.
They eat in silence, knowing that in 24 hours they will all be dead, except Abrini, who leaves without notifying anyone and without us knowing how the others have taken it.
On the morning of the 13th Abdeslam leaves with
his brother Brahim to reconnoitre the terrain.
He claims that he knew nothing of the other targets.
His task, first of all, was to transport three human bombs to the Stade de France and then blow himself up in a cafe in the 18th arrondissement that he only remembers, he says, that it was on a corner.
The others act three by three, he will never know the name of the cafe or why they send him alone, the least experienced fighter.
When he gets back to Bobigny, it's time to get going, they've even been late.
Abdeslam rides in the Clio with the two Iraqis who do not speak a word of French, and Bilal Hadfi, who is sweating because he is no longer sure that he wants to die at 20 years old.
Unfortunately, Abdeslam has managed to miscalculate the journey time during the reconnaissance trip and as a result they arrive at the Stadium without tickets and when the match has already started,
and instead of the planned massacre there will only be one fatality, aside from the three kamikazes in their Bayern Munich jerseys.
Anyway, he leaves the three of them there and goes to the coffee they have chosen for the morning.
He drinks something at the bar.
He looks at those young people, very young, who have fun dancing and who are like him.
He can not.
It's not made for this.
He gets back into the Clio, which has a breakdown.
He leaves him.
He buys a mobile.
He calls his friend Mohamed Amri.
He explains to her that he has gotten into a “dirty mess” —breakdown, traffic accident, a fight—, no one is clear about what has happened.
Amri says that he can't go, he is working.
Abdeslam insists, he is well screwed.
“Well”, says Amri, “let's see”, he is going to call Attou.
With the little money he has, Abdeslam takes a taxi and crosses Paris to the southern outskirts.
The news on the radio: "This increases my anguish", he did not imagine the magnitude of the attacks.
The taxi driver, a North African, constantly repeats: "All this is going to fall on us, the Muslims."
In Montrouge, he throws in a garbage can the belt that he has deactivated as best he could and perhaps risking his life.
Later, in Chatillon, he takes refuge in a building, he finds other young squatters smoking in the stairwell.
They talk about the attacks, look at the images of the terraces of the Bataclan on the screen of a mobile.
There is a moment when he falls asleep, with his head inside his anorak.
Amri and Attou arrive at 4 in the morning.
They will say that Abdeslam is as if stunned, as if he were in a trance, he in turn sees them also dazed because they have finally understood what is really happening, and what the "chunguísimo roll" means.
We imagine them traveling on the motorway towards Brussels at the Golf de Amri, the three of them in that state of trance, a daydream, a feverish nightmare, but they have passed three police barriers without mishaps and in the third they have been interviewed by a Belgian journalist about the effect that all these barriers, all these controls, had on them, and they have transmitted to the listeners these few seconds of microphone in the street, and they do not seem to be disturbed at all, but rather jokers, three crazy and talkative urchins: “We It seemed that they had gone a little too far."
“Ah, yes, it is true that they have gone too far... But we have understood why, it is normal with the one that is falling”.
Circulate.
They are already in Molenbeek.
Ali Oulkadi replaces Amri and Attou: I will tell this episode next week.
Abdeslam meets in the safe house with the other members of the group, the El Bakraoui brothers, Laachraoui, as well as his eternal companion, Abrini, who opens the door for him.
It is a difficult moment: he has to explain to the brothers that his belt has not worked.
Disbelief, anger, the situation degenerates, they scold him but he stays on his side, insists on the version of which he now repeats that it was a lie;
the good version
it is that he has not given up due to a technical failure or cowardice, but "for humanity".
From then on, he goes from one shelter to another until March 18, when he is captured four days before the attacks on the subway and at the Brussels airport, in which it is not known whether he should participate, a matter that falls to the Belgian trial. that will take place and that is none of our business.
2. The consolation
It was his last interrogation.
After making us dizzy these last days like a capricious movie star ("sometimes I speak, sometimes I don't speak", it depends on whether they are nice to me and whether the questions suit me), he announces that he will finally tell his truth, the final version and definitively, the version for history, as we speak of the trial for history, regarding the trial of Friday the 13th. His statement is spread over three days and is more or less convincing.
On the third day she made a kind of doctrinal exposition in the form of a dialogue with her lawyer, Olivia Ronan—excellent, no doubt, except that, also no doubt, I don't like her calling him Salah in the audience— .
In this last straight, however, he managed to excite.
He pierced the breastplate, as they say.
He spoke of his mother, he bit back a convincing sob.
He apologized to the three poor devils, Amri, Attou and Oulkadi, whose lives he has screwed up, and to the victims, among whom he obviously includes himself.
He also said something strange, both sincere and obscene, I think.
“I don't know if the victims hold a grudge against me, but I tell them: don't let the grudge suffocate you.
There is a lot of darkness in this story, but there is also a light that sprouts... It may be awkward to say this in front of the victims, but it is what I have felt when listening to some of them.
They have come out stronger from this test, they have become better, they have acquired qualities that are not sold in the supermarket...”.
“I don't know if the victims hold a grudge against me, but I tell them: don't let the grudge suffocate you.
There is a lot of darkness in this story, but there is also a light that sprouts... It may be awkward to say this in front of the victims, but it is what I have felt when listening to some of them.
They have come out stronger from this test, they have become better, they have acquired qualities that are not sold in the supermarket...”.
“I don't know if the victims hold a grudge against me, but I tell them: don't let the grudge suffocate you.
There is a lot of darkness in this story, but there is also a light that sprouts... It may be awkward to say this in front of the victims, but it is what I have felt when listening to some of them.
They have come out stronger from this test, they have become better, they have acquired qualities that are not sold in the supermarket...”.
I'm not going to contradict him, I've thought about it too.
But I'm not sure that congratulating them on their integrity will be of consolation to the victims.
This Easter weekend, leafing through my notebooks from the beginning of the trial, I came across this other ending to his testimony: “When I left the hospital I thought I was going to take advantage of life twice as much.
Actually I am at most half of what I was.
There are people for whom the phrase that they always tell you, 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' must be true, but not for me.
I am still fighting, but in fact I have been sentenced to life in prison.”
© L'Obs.
Translation by Jaime Zulaika.
This chronicle, written for
Le Nouvel Observateur
, is published in
La Repubblica
,
EL PAÍS
and
Le Temps
.
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