Salah Abdeslam was taken from his cell on Wednesday morning and put on a transport to France. His lawyer Delphine Paci reported this to the French news agency AFP. “They came to get him from his cell this morning at 9 o’clock and he left for France,” says Paci. “This is a clear violation of the rule of law,” she added.
Abdeslam was sentenced by the special court of assizes in Paris to an ‘incompressible’ (or irreducible) life sentence, with a ‘perpetual’ security period of effectively thirty years, for the attacks of November 13, 2015. The court’s popular jury The assizes in Brussels also declared him guilty last year of the attacks of March 22, 2016. But the sentence took into account the sentence he already received in Paris, and simply referred to the twenty years in prison he received for the shooting in Monarch.
Violation of human rights
After the trial in Brussels, Abdeslam did not wish to return to France and serve his sentence in Belgium. The French-speaking court of appeal in Brussels banned the return in October in summary proceedings. The court ruled that Abdeslam cannot return until the French-speaking court of first instance in Brussels has ruled on the merits. According to Abdeslam’s defense, he risks having his human rights violated if he returns to France. Abdeslam’s lawyers summoned the Belgian state to definitively ban that return. The substantive case had yet to start.
Avoid release
Salah Abdeslam has been transferred to France to avoid release. This is what Eric Van der Sypt, spokesperson for the federal public prosecutor’s office, says. “An agreement had been reached between the judicial authorities of France and Belgium to loan Salah Abdeslam for the duration of the trial and a possible appeal to the Court of Cassation. If we were to wait any longer, we risk running out of title to keep him in prison any longer and of course we want to avoid that at all times,” it said.
According to the federal public prosecutor’s office, the judicial agreement between France and Belgium takes precedence over the ongoing civil proceedings in which Abdeslam is contesting his extradition. That is why, according to Van der Sypt, the public prosecutor’s office is not bound by the decision of the judge in summary proceedings. It stated that Abdeslam was not allowed to return until the French-speaking court of first instance in Brussels had made a ruling on the merits. That procedure had not yet started.
Van der Sypt says that the public prosecutor’s office has examined the file “thoroughly from a legal perspective” and that there is also case law from the European Court of Human Rights that endorses the public prosecutor’s position.
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