Salah Abdeslam

Salah Abdeslam ( ; born 15 September 1989) is a Belgium -born French national. He is suspected of being the only surviving member of the group directly involved in the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 (in which 130 people were killed and 683 others were injured) through providing logistical support for the assailants, driving them to their target locations, and having some involvement in the manufacture of the explosives used. Having evaded authorities, he became the target of one of the largest manhunts in modern European history. Europol had Abdeslam as first in a list of wanted criminals out of 57 individuals listed publicly by the organisation in January 2016. In April 2018 he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempted murder against the police as shoot-out occurred during his arrest by the Belgian police on 18 March 2016. Abdeslam is known to have had contacts or social links to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as ISIL subsequently made a claim of responsibility for the attack. Of the men known to be involved in the attacks, he and Mohammad Abrini are the only two still alive - all others involved either having killed themselves or having been killed by French police officers . After about four months on the run, Abdeslam was apprehended during a police raid conducted in the Molenbeek area of Brussels, on 18 March 2016. On 23 April 2018 Salah Abdeslam was sentenced in Brussels to 20 years in prison. Salah Abdeslam still faces trial over the 2015 Paris attacks. "Attentat du 13-Novembre : deux ans après, les révélations de l'enquête [Attack of the 13th November : Two Years later, the Revelations of the Inquiry]" .

Belgian-born French convicted terrorist Salah Abdeslam ( French pronunciation: [sala abdɛslam] ; born 15 September 1989) is a Belgian-born Islamic terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison in France in 2022 as the only surviving member of the 10-man unit that carried out the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 , in which 130 people were killed and more than 490 injured. Abdeslam was born and raised in the Molenbeek district of Brussels . His family was of Moroccan origin but had acquired French nationality. Abdeslam worked for two years at the Brussels public transport company STIB-MIVB until he drifted into petty crime and unemployment. From 2013, he helped his brother Brahim Abdeslam, who was a suicide bomber in the Paris attacks, run a Molenbeek café-bar which was a centre for drug dealing and watching Islamic State videos. In the months preceding the Paris attacks, Abdeslam drove to Hungary and Germany to collect members of the Brussels Islamic State terror cell who were returning from Syria via the migrant route. He also purchased material for making explosives. In the days before the attacks, he went to Paris to arrange accommodation for the attackers. On the evening of 13 November 2015, Abdeslam drove the three Stade de France bombers to the football stadium, before failing to detonate his own suicide vest and abandoning his car. He then called upon friends to collect him and take him back to Brussels, where he went into hiding. On 15 March 2016, police raided a property in the Forest district of Brussels, where Abdeslam was hiding with two other members of the terrorist cell. One of them was killed during the shootout, while Abdeslam and the third man escaped from a back window. Abdeslam was arrested on 18 March 2016 in Molenbeek and extradited back to France. In 2018, Abdeslam was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his part in the Forest shootout in Brussels. In September 2021, he stood trial in Paris . During the trial, he spoke for the first time about his role in the attacks, having maintained his right to silence since 2016. He said he had not killed anyone and claimed he had decided not to detonate his explosives at the last minute. After a ten-month trial, he was found guilty of all charges including terrorism and murder and sentenced to a full-life term of imprisonment. In December 2022, he stood trial in Brussels charged with involvement in the planning of the 2016 Brussels bombings , which took place four days after his arrest. The jury returned a verdict of guilty in July 2023.