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Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers 'give up his defence' Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers 'give up his defence'
(about 1 hour later)
Lawyers for the main suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, have said that they will no longer defend him. Lawyers say they will no longer defend the main Paris terrorist attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam while he refuses to speak.
“We both decided to give up his defence,” lawyer Frank Berton said in an interview with BFM TV on Wednesday. Franck Berton said he could do nothing while his client remained silent and that he was not engaged to make “social visits” to the jail.
“We don’t think that he will speak and he will use the right to remain silent,” Berton said in a joint interview with fellow lawyer Sven Mary. Abdeslam is suspected of being the only surviving member of the terrorist commandos who carried out a series of shootings and bombings in Paris last November killing 130 people.
“In this position what would you like us to do? We said from the beginning … that if our client remained silent we would quit his defence,” Berton added. French lawyer Berton and his Belgian colleague Sven Mary took on his defence after Abdeslam, 27, was arrested in Belgium in March and transferred to a prison in France, since when he has refused to answer questions.
Mary said: “When you have the feeling of being there to make social visits to the prison, that is the moment when a decision has to be made.” The suspect has been put under investigation for murder and links to a terrorist organisation.
Abdeslam has refused to answer questions since being transferred to France from Belgium in April and is believed to be angry at round-the-clock surveillance of his jail cell. “We have both decided to give up the defence. We know and we are convinced – he has told us – that he will not talk and he will exercise his right to silence. What do you want us to do? I said from the first day that if my client remained silent, we would stop his defence,” Berton told BFMTV.
After four months on the run, Abdeslam was arrested on 18 March in the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, where he grew up. Berton criticised what he said was a “political decision” to put Abdeslam under round-the-clock surveillance in his prison cell at Fleury-Merogis, outside Paris. The suspect has complained that he is watched 24 hours a day by video.
He was transferred to France to face terror charges on 27 April. “I feel it’s an immense waste [of opportunity]. I’ve seen Salah Abdeslam decline from month to month. When someone is scrutinising your every act and gesture even at night, you become crazy. This is a political decision, not a legal one,” Berton said.
Investigators have yet to pin down Abdeslam’s exact role in the coordinated attacks on Paris bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium last November in which 130 people were killed. He added: “We were convinced he had things to say and that he would say them. But he’s no longer talking and that’s a shame.
“We’re not going to sit next to him and watch him keeping quiet. He doesn’t want to talk, that’s his right, but in those conditions it’s difficult, impossible even, for us to do our job.
Mary, who after Abdeslam’s arrest said he was cooperating with police, added: “We have made Salah Abdeslam silent, but the real victims in all this are the victims of the Paris attacks, because they have the right to know the truth and the right to try to understand the incomprehensible.”
Abdeslam is not required to have legal representation during the investigation, but must have lawyers for his eventual trial.