He “has just been incarcerated in a prison in the Paris region” after his transfer from Belgium, said Eric Dupond-Moretti. “In accordance with the decision of the French courts and the wishes of victims’ associations, he will serve his irreducible life sentence there,” added the Minister of Justice on X.
In September, Salah Abdeslam was convicted of “assassinations in a terrorist context” by the Belgian justice system for the March 2016 attacks in Brussels. These attacks were committed by the same jihadist cell as those in Paris. Three men blew themselves up, two at the airport and another in the metro, leaving hundreds injured in addition to 32 dead.
Family ties and “violation of the rule of law”
Since his arrest in March 2016, Salah Abdeslam has spent most of his detention in France. In July 2022, after the end of the trial in Paris for November 13, he was the subject of a “temporary handover” to Belgium, while the trial of the Brussels attacks took place.
Although of French nationality, Salah Abdeslam expressed his desire to serve his sentence in Belgium where he grew up and has all his family ties. In October 2023, the Brussels Court of Appeal, seized by its lawyers, had “temporarily suspended” the transfer of Salah Abdeslam to France, where the jihadist is supposed to serve his sentence for the attacks of November 13, 2015.