Salah Abdeslam

• Salah Abdeslam is the key suspect among the 20 men on trial.
• If convicted he faces the toughest life sentence available under French law.
• he November 2015 attacks deeply traumatized France, leading Paris to ramp up its military campaign.

A France court will deliver verdicts Wednesday against 20 men accused in the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, After a marathon 10-month trial that reopened the wounds of modern France’s worst peacetime atrocity.

On the night of November 13, 2015, a team of Islamic State group jihadists laid siege to Paris, attacking the national sports stadium, bars, and the Bataclan concert hall. 130 people were killed.

The trial that began on September 8, 2021, has been the biggest in modern French history, the culmination of a six-year, multi-country investigation whose findings run to more than a million pages.

All the attackers were killed in the aftermath of the assault except Salah Abdeslam, who was captured alive by police four months later.

Abdeslam is the key suspect among the 20 accused on trial, six of whom have been tried in absentia. If convicted, he faces the toughest life sentence available under French law.

The verdicts, drawn up by a panel of five judges who have been deliberating at a secret location since Monday, are expected from 5:00 pm (1500 GMT).

Survivors and relatives of victims have applauded the trial as an important stage in overcoming the trauma.

“When you take part, you hear about everyone else’s stories, what they suffered, what they lost,” David Fritz Goeppinger, one of the Bataclan hostages, told AFP recently.

Arthur Denouveaux, head of the Life for Paris survivors’ group, said that after nine gruelling months, people were ready for the end.

“I’m not that interested in the verdicts in themselves. It’s really about saying ‘That’s it. It’s behind us. The justice system has done its work, we can move on’,” he told AFP.

The main focus will be on Abdeslam, now 32, who discarded his suicide belt on the night of the attack and fled back to his hometown, Brussels, where many of the extremists lived.

He told the court that he had a change of heart and decided not to kill people. But prosecutors have argued that he shared the murderous intent of the rest of the attack team and that his equipment simply malfunctioned.

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