PARIS, Nov 29, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – French prosecutors called Friday for 20
suspects to go on trial over the massacre of 130 people by suicide bombers
and gunmen in Paris four years ago.
In a 562-page indictment, the office of the national anti-terror
prosecutor (PNAT) charged 14 people currently in prison or under judicial
supervision, including Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving suspected
participant in the attacks.
Six others are currently targeted by arrest warrants, including Fabien and
Jean-Michel Clain, notorious propagandists for the Islamic State group, which
claimed responsibility for the killings.
An IS online magazine claimed in March that the two brothers were killed
in coalition airstrikes in Syria earlier this year. The five judges
overseeing investigations that wrapped up last month, and who have worked
with colleagues in Austria, Germany, Greece and Bulgaria, will now decide
when to hold the trial, expected in Paris during 2021.
The PNAT said 1,740 civil plaintiffs had joined the case against the
suspected organisers of one of the deadliest attacks in French history.
A total of 130 people died in the November 15, 2015, assaults by 10
heavily armed gunmen who attacked during a football match at the national
stadium outside Paris, and then bars and restaurants in the capital as well
as the Bataclan concert hall.
All detonated their explosive vests or were killed by police except
Abdeslam, who was arrested in Belgium four months later.
He has refused to cooperate with investigators and remains in solitary
confinement.
The other suspects facing trial have been charged with helping to organise
or finance the attacks, or helping the gunmen to flee.
They include Oussama Atar, a Belgian-Moroccan citizen who is thought to
have helped orchestrate the attack from Raqa, the former capital of the
Islamic State’s so-called “caliphate” in Syria.
Atar was reportedly killed in early 2018, but his death has not been
officially confirmed.
Since 2015, France has been struck by a wave of jihadist terror strikes
that have claimed the lives of over 250 people.
The same jihadist cell blamed for the Paris attacks is also believed to
have struck the airport and metro system of Brussels in March 2016, killing
32 people.