French justice finds Abdeslam and 19 others guilty of the 2015 Paris attacks

Illustration of an intervention by Martin Vettes, Salah Abdeslam's lawyer, last Friday in Paris.BENOIT PEYRUCQ (AFP)

The special criminal court of Paris has considered this Wednesday guilty of all the crimes of which they were accused Salah Abdeslam, the main defendant for the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris and Saint-Denis, and 19 other men who sat on the bench.

The judges only reduced the sentence for one of the defendants, Farid Kharhkach, from association of terrorist criminals to association of criminals for fraud.

The court has sentenced Absdelam to irreducible life imprisonment.

The judges determined, after 10 months of trial and two and a half days of deliberations in a secretly located military barracks, that Abdeslam was a co-author of terrorist assassinations against civilians and security forces.

The court ruled out that, since he was not present at some of the crime scenes, such as the Bataclan nightclub, he was not fully responsible for the attacks, and considered that the set of objectives should be considered as one, and that there was only one scene of the crime.

The ruling marks the end of the largest anti-terrorist trial in France in history.

It was judged the biggest attack in a decade in which Islamist terrorism hit France.

It lasted 10 months, an entire school year, in a room built for the occasion inside the Palace of Justice in Paris and with hundreds of victims, lawyers, journalists, as well as five magistrates and three prosecutors, 14 defendants on the bench (and six judged in absentia), and even one of the most renowned contemporary French writers, Emmanuel Carrère, who has covered it for

and EL PAÍS and will turn it into a literary work in a book entitled

.

Everything has been filmed for history, just like the trial in the fall of 2020 for the January 2015 attacks on the satirical weekly

and the Jewish supermarket Hyper-Cacher, and the trial of Nazi Klaus Barbie in 1987.

For the victims, and for France, the trial has represented a therapeutic moment.

But it has been much more than that.

It has allowed a better understanding of the planning and execution of the attacks, and peek into the minds of the terrorists and their accomplices.

Also speaking and listening: if there has been a collective protagonist in this process, it has been the survivors and relatives of those murdered in the Bataclan concert hall, on the terraces of the cafes in the east of Paris and in the vicinity of the St. -Denis.

By testifying, some have advanced in the grieving process.

They have provided, through a multitude of different perspectives, detailed information about those tragic hours and about the experience of terrorism and its devastating effects.

The macro process that ended this Wednesday has been carried out with serenity.

There have been no attacks in these months or external political interference.

Inside, respect has prevailed.

In his last essay,

, the specialist in jihadism Hugo Micheron contrasts the French approach after suffering traumatic attacks (and I could have added, the Spanish after 11-M) with the response of the United States after 9/11, "which led to the inextricable fiasco of Guantánamo" .

Processes such as the 2015 attacks, on the other hand, "symbolically allow the initiative to be retaken after, with the attacks, the jihadists set the pace".

"In addition to doing justice," adds Micheron, "they allow, through the judicial process, to observe the words, attitudes and justifications of the accused, and at the same time listen to the stories of the victims and, progressively, produce meaning and knowledge around these calamities.

The other protagonist was the main defendant present, Abdeslam, 32, a Frenchman born and raised in Belgium, a member of the commando of the attacks (and brother of one of the kamikazes).

On November 13, at the last moment, after driving three suicide bombers to the Saint-Denis stadium, he did not activate the explosive vest with which he was going to blow himself up and cause a massacre.

He maintained during the trial that he resigned "for humanity";

the judges have concluded that, if he did not activate it, it was because the mechanics failed.

His argument to defend himself against him, and that of his lawyers, has been that he did not shoot anyone and that in any case he was not a first sword of the Islamic State.

His lawyers have described him as an impressionable young man who channeled his rebellion and indignation at the injustices of the world (specifically the war in Syria from 2011) towards radical Islamism.

They have alleged that, since all the members of the commando who shot were dead, they wanted to turn his client into a symbol and give her an exemplary punishment.

With the end of the macro process for the attacks of November 2015, a chapter is closed, but not the book.

In the fall, two other trials will deal with the Islamist attacks of the past decade.

On September 15, the trial for the attack on July 14, 2016 in Nice will open in Paris, when a terrorist, behind the wheel of a truck, killed 86 people on the seafront.

And on October 10, the trial for the attacks on March 22 of the same year at Brussels' Zaventem airport and at the Maelbeek metro station, in which 32 people died, will open in Brussels.

Several of those sentenced this Wednesday in Paris, including Abdeslam, will also sit on the bench in Brussels.

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