Salah Abdeslam, 32, the only surviving member of an Islamic State cell that murdered 130 people in suicide bombings and shootingsin and around the French capital in November 2015, has told a Paris court that he backed out at the last minute from committing a suicide bombing in a café.
Four men were on Wednesday handed sentences of between eight years and life in prison for having helped or encouraged the 2016 murder, claimed by the so-called islamic State group, of Father Jacques Hamel, 85, whose throat was slashed during mass in his church in northern France by two 19-year-olds who were shot dead by police.
A court in Grenoble, south-east France, on Friday sentenced former French army dog handler Nordahl Lelandais, 39, to life imprisonment, with a tariff of 22 years, for the abduction and murder in 2017 of eight-year-old Maëlys De Araujo, his second murder conviction in less than a year.
Four alleged accomplices in the July 2016 murder of 85-year-old French priest Jacques Hamel, whose throat was cut by two teenagers who claimed to be acting in the name of the so-called Islamic State group, has opened in Paris.
Salah Abdeslam, 32, believed to be the only surviving member of a group of Islamic State terrorists which carried out a series of massacres in Paris on November 13th 2015, has told a Paris court that he hurt no-one in the attacks and had at the last minute decided not to detonate his explosive suicide belt.
The nine-month trial in Paris of 20 individuals accused of variously perpetrating or assisting the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks by the so-called Islamic State group in the French capital, in which 130 people died and more than 400 were wounded, opened in September. Throughout the trial, Mediapart is publishing the first-hand reactions of seven victims, who either survived the attacks or who lost loved ones, as the hearings unfold. Here, Georges Salines, whose daughter died in the shooting massacre of 90 people at the Bataclan music hall, and Christophe Naudin, who lost a close friend in the same attack which he himself survived, give their views of what emerged from the cross-examination this month of the families of the gunmen.
Stéphane Richard, CEO of French telecoms giant Orange, has been handed a suspended jail sentence after he was found guilty by a Paris appeals court of aiding and abetting the misuse of public funds in a case centered on a 403-million-euro state payout awarded in 2008 to late French tycoon Bernard Tapie.
Ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy appeared on Tuesday, as he was ordered to, as a witness at the trial of his former aides accused of misuse of public funds, but refused to answer questions, arguing that he was accountable 'to the French people, not to a court'.
Swiss prosecution services have ordered former French football star and ex-president of UEFA, Michel Platini, and former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, to stand trial over an allegedly fraudulent 1.8-million-euro payment made to Platini by the latter in 2011, a move that has yet to be approved by a federal court.
The trial of 20 individuals accused of variously perpetrating or helping to carry out the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris continues. As part of its regular coverage of the hearings, Mediapart is publishing the first-hand reactions of seven victims of the massacres as they take part in, and follow, the court proceedings. Here, schoolteacher Christophe Naudin, who survived the shooting massacre at the Bataclan concert hall in which one of his closest friends died, reflects on the five weeks during which the civil parties have been giving evidence, and begins by recounting his own turn, last week, at taking to the witness stand.
The trial has opened in Paris of two men accused of the 2018 stabbing murder in Paris motivated by anti-Semitism of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
Zoe Alexander, sister of Nick Alexander, a 35-year-old British merchandise manager for US group Eagles of Death Metal and who died at the Bataclan Paris concert hall when members of the so-called Islamic State group attacked the venue on November 13th 2015 in a shooting massacre that left 90 dead, told the defendants at their ongoing trial in the French capital that while she and her family “deplore what you did, we don’t hate you”.
At a court in Versailles, French prosecutors on Thursday called for a suspended prison sentence to be handed to footballer Karim Benzema, the star striker of Real Madrid and the France national team, for his alleged part in an attempt to blackmail team-mate Mathieu Valbuena over a sexually explicit video recording, for which four others are also standing trial.
The trial of 20 individuals accused of variously perpetrating or helping with the carrying out of the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris is continuing, in proceedings that are expected to last nine months. As part of its regular coverage of the trial, Mediapart is publishing the first-hand reactions and reflections of seven victims of the massacres as they follow the court proceedings. Here Roman, aged 30, who escaped alive after terrorists attacked La Belle Équipe restaurant where he was dining with friends, gives his evidence to the court about the attacks and describes the events that preceded it.
