Salah Abdeslam

Salah Abdeslam (صلاح عبد السلام; ; born 15 September 1989) is a Belgian-born Islamic terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison in France in 2022 as the only surviving member of the 10-man unit that carried out the 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 and then drifted into petty crime and unemployment.

Abdeslam was born in the Brussels district of Molenbeek on 15 September 1989 to parents who came from Morocco and who had acquired French nationality after living in Algeria.

Abdeslam and his three older brothers and younger sister were therefore born with French nationality.

One brother, Brahim, also took part in the Paris attacks, shooting people on café terraces and then detonating his suicide vest.

Abdeslam attended the Athénée Royal Serge Creuz secondary school in Molenbeek.

After gaining a technical qualification, he found employment in 2009 as a mechanic with STIB-MIVB, where his father also worked.

In December 2011 Abdeslam, together with childhood friend Abdelhamid Abaaoud and two others, was arrested for an attempted robbery on a garage in Ottignies to the south of Brussels.

He was given a suspended sentence, but the months he had spent in prison on remand had cost him his job.

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.

He then alternated temporary work with unemployment and, from 2013, helped his brother Brahim run his Molenbeek café-bar, Café Les Béguines, which was a centre for drug dealing and watching Islamic State videos.

Abdeslam drank alcohol, used cannabis, and frequented nightclubs and casinos.

He acquired a further two convictions, one for theft and one for possession of cannabis.

On the evening of 13 November 2015, Abdeslam drove the three Stade de France bombers to the football stadium, before failing to detonate his own suicide vest and abandoning his car.

He then called upon friends to collect him and take him back to Brussels, where he went into hiding.

The café-bar was closed nine days before the 13 November attacks, after a police raid in August 2015 had found evidence of drug dealing on the premises.

In the meantime the brothers had sold the lease.

Both brothers lived at home with their parents and another brother, Mohammed, who had noticed that in the months before the Paris attacks they had changed, giving up alcohol and starting to pray.

After the police raid on terrorists in Verviers in January 2015, the names of Abdeslam and his brother Brahim were given to police by an informant.

The brothers were questioned but the investigation was not followed up due to a lack of resources at the anti-terror unit of the federal police.

Abdeslam and his brother Brahim were also named on a list of people suspected of having become radicalised which was provided to the mayor of Molenbeek by the Belgian intelligence services on 26 October 2015.

The mayor said that she did not use the list to track down possible terrorists, adding that it was the responsibility of the federal police.

At the beginning of August 2015, Abdeslam made a very brief trip to Greece together with Ahmed Dahmani (arrested in Turkey in November 2015).

Between the 30 August and 3 October, Abdeslam made five journeys to Hungary and Germany to collect terrorists who were returning from Syria with false passports on the migrant route, all of whom would be involved with the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.

The cars in which they travelled were rented with cash provided by the Islamic State.

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 to France.

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 went on 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.

In Brussels in 2018, Abdeslam was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his part in the Forest shootout.

In September 2021 he went on trial in Paris.