Terrorism2015 Paris attack mastermind sentenced in Belgium

Salah Abdeslam, the mastermind of the 13 November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, has been found guilty of attempted terrorist murder in a separate trial in Brussels, and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Co-defendant Sofien Ayari, a 24-year-old Tunisian national, was also sentenced to twenty years on the same charge.

The court said that there was “no doubt” that their “radicalism is deep-seated.”

The BBC reports that the trial of Abdeslam and Ayari dealt with a shootout with Belgian police on 15 March 2016, a raid which was part of a 5-month search for Abdeslam, who was supposed to detonate a suicide bomb he was wearing as part of the 15 November Paris attacks. He changed his mind at the last minute, ditched the suicide vest, and was driven back to Brussels by fellow Islamists.

On 18 March, three days after the Brussels raid, the Belgian security services arrested him in the district of Molenbeek, a hotbed for Islamist terrorism.

A few days later, three members of the Abdeslam’s terrorist cell , detonated suicide vests they were wearing in two separate attacks in Brussels, killing 32 people and wounded hundreds.

Abdeslam is to stand trial in France for his involvement in the attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were killed in six separate incidents in November 2015.

Abdeslam was not in the courtroom when the verdict was handed. He has been extradited to France, and is being held in custody in a French jail. He attended the first day of the trial, but refused to be in court for the rest of the trial, claiming the court was biased against Muslims.