Salah Abdeslam

Salah Abdeslam (French pronunciation: [sala abdɛslam]; born 15 September 1989) is a Belgian-born French Islamic terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison in France in 2022 as the only surviving member of a 10-man unit that carried out 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 three of the unit to the Stade de France football stadium which was the location of their bombing. He subsequently failed to detonate his own suicide vest, abandoning his car, and called 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.