A staggered recovery? The trial of the November 13 attacks will resume as scheduled on January 4 but could be suspended for two days due to the Covid-19 contamination of the main accused, Salah Abdeslam, we learned Thursday from a source close to the case, confirming information from France Inter.
The trial is to resume on January 4 after two weeks of interruption and “may be suspended until the 6, then resume normally”, according to this source. The interrogations scheduled for January 4 and 5 will be postponed to a later date, the source said.
Several sources of contamination at Fleury-Mérogis prison
The only survivor of the jihadist commandos which left 130 dead and hundreds injured in Paris and Saint-Denis in November 2015, tested positive for Covid-19 on December 27. He was held for the duration of the hearing in Fleury-Mérogis prison, south of Paris. Several sources of contamination were detected there and a massive screening of detainees and staff is underway until Monday, according to a union source.
The special assize court has been judging 20 defendants since September 8 and until the end of May, including 14 present at the hearing, suspected of being involved to varying degrees in the preparation of the most deadly jihadist attacks ever perpetrated in France.
The pandemic has already disrupted trials in France, like that of the terrorist attacks Charlie hebdo and Hyper Cacher in 2020. Briefly interrupted at the end of September after a suspected case, the hearing was suspended for good on October 31, after three cases of contamination among the accused. The break, initially scheduled for two weeks, ended up lasting a month.
Currently, clusters have been identified in several French prisons. At the national level, 370 contaminations were detected among some 70,000 detainees and 448 among the staff (out of about 40,000), according to a report by the ministry established on December 27.