The only surviving suspect from the Islamic State attack on Paris in which 130 innocent people died was jailed for 20 years today for trying to kill policemen in a shootout in Brussels.
Salah Abdeslam, 28, and his Tunisian co-accused Sofien Ayari, 24, were convicted of attempted terrorist murder, while Abdeslam was on the run after the 2015 bloodbath in France.
Ayari was also sentenced to 20 years.
The pair, who were tried in Belgium in their absence, shot at eight police officers who cornered them in March 2016, four months after Abdeslam went on the run following the Paris attack. Prosecutor Kathleen Grosjean described how the policemen sent to arrest the pair “walked into a warzone”, with three officers wounded.
She called for 20 years’ jail for each defendant, including at least 13 in a high security prison.
Abdeslam, a self-confessed jihadi with a French passport, had told a previous hearing: “I’m not afraid of you, I put my trust in Allah.” He is in solitary confinement in a high-security cell in France where he is awaiting another trial in connection with the Paris attack.
Among the nine attackers involved was Abdeslam’s brother, Brahim Abdeslam, 31, who blew himself up inside a packed restaurant.
Salah allegedly wore a suicide belt to the Stade de France, but it was later found discarded in a dustbin after he failed to detonate the device.
