Salah Abdeslam is the only member of the cell behind the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 who was alive to stand trial. Those attacks killed 130 people and injured hundreds more. On June 29, 2022 the special assize court in Paris found him guilty of murder and attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise and of belonging to a terrorist organisation, and sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the heaviest sentence in French law. He gave up his appeal, and the verdict is final.
His name is attached to a second case in Belgium. Four days after his arrest in Brussels on March 18, 2016, attacks in the Belgian capital killed 32 people. A jury in the Brussels Assize Court found him guilty of terrorist murders on July 25, 2023, together with five other defendants, although he had been in custody on the day. At sentencing in September 2023 the court imposed no additional penalty on him, judging his earlier sentences sufficient. An earlier Belgian conviction, in April 2018, for terrorism-related attempted murder, had already brought him a 20-year term. In 2025 he was held in France.
Abdeslam was born in Brussels and holds French nationality. He was 28 when the Brussels court first convicted him in April 2018, 31 at the start of the Paris trial in September 2021 and 32 when it ended. He grew up in the Molenbeek district of Brussels, an area of the city with high unemployment and a long record of struggling with crime, and the district is where he was arrested in 2016.
On the night of Friday November 13, 2015 a group of attackers struck in several places in and around Paris. The final count was 130 dead. More than 400 people were injured, and some were left with lasting injuries. About 90 of the dead were killed at a single music venue and the rest elsewhere in the city.
The other attackers all died that night. Abdeslam was the one member of the team who survived, and he was charged with murder and related terrorist offenses.
The Belgian and French investigations quickly centred on Abdeslam. On March 15, 2016, police carried out a raid in the Forest district of Brussels connected to the Paris inquiry. Police officers were wounded during the operation, and the later Belgian prosecution concerned an attempt on their lives. Three days after the raid, on March 18, 2016, Abdeslam was arrested in Molenbeek, together with Sofien Ayari, a Tunisian national then aged 24. Four days later, on March 22, 2016, the attacks in Brussels took place. He was in custody when they happened.
He was then moved to France, where he spent most of the following two years in custody awaiting trial in the Paris case, and was brought to Belgium under heavy security for the trial in the Forest case.
The Belgian trial of Abdeslam and Ayari opened in Brussels in February 2018. Prosecutors alleged that the two men had acted together in an attempt to kill police officers in the Forest district on March 15, 2016, and they asked for 20 years for each. Abdeslam appeared at the first session, declined to testify, and then refused to attend the remaining hearings. He was not charged in that trial with the Brussels attacks of March 22, 2016, although officials believed he was linked to the three men who carried them out.
On Monday April 23, 2018 the Brussels court found Abdeslam and Ayari guilty of terrorism-related attempted murder and sentenced each of them to 20 years. Abdeslam went back to France, where he was still awaiting the Paris trial.
The special assize court in Paris opened the trial of the November 13, 2015 attacks on September 8, 2021. Twenty men were tried. Fourteen were in the courtroom, among them Abdeslam, and six were tried in absentia; of those six, all but one are presumed to have been killed in Syria or Iraq, and the other is held in Turkey. Abdeslam alone faced the full range of charges: multiple counts of murder, complicity to murder, belonging to a terrorist organisation and taking part in a conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping as a member of a terrorist organisation.
The hearings ran for 149 days. About 1,800 people were civil parties to the case, 415 people gave evidence, and the judges had more than a million pages of documents before them. Victims' associations, among them Life for Paris and 13Onze15, took part throughout. The first police officer to reach the scene gave evidence on September 22, 2021. On November 10, 2021 the former president, François Hollande, testified, the first former head of state to give evidence in a French criminal court. Hearings were repeatedly interrupted in the winter of 2021 and 2022 by infections among the defendants, lawyers and the prosecution.
Survivors and relatives of the dead addressed the court through the spring of 2022.
On April 15, 2022 Abdeslam took the stand and offered his condolences and apologies to all the victims. He asked the court to forgive him and said that the families could hate him in moderation. He also apologised to three co-defendants who had helped him after the attacks. A lawyer for around a hundred victims said that neither he nor his clients were moved by it, and prosecutors described the apology as a calculated attempt to win leniency. Abdeslam told the court that he had decided not to go through with his part in the attacks; the court rejected that account.
Closing speeches by the prosecution took place from 8 to June 10, 2022, with sentences requested that ranged from five years to life. The defense pleas ended on June 24.
The presiding judge, Jean-Louis Peries, read the verdict on Wednesday June 29, 2022. All 20 men were found guilty. Abdeslam was convicted of murder and attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise and of belonging to a terrorist organisation. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It was the first incompressible life sentence passed for terrorism in France, and the fifth in modern French history; the four earlier ones were for non-terrorist crimes.
The other defendants received sentences that ranged from two years to life. Mohamed Abrini, who was linked to the Brussels attacks as well, received life with a minimum of 22 years. Four others received 30 years each. Eighteen men were convicted on terrorism charges and one on a lesser fraud charge.
On the morning of March 22, 2016, attacks hit Brussels. Thirty-two people were killed and more than 300 were injured; about 900 people in all suffered physical or mental injuries. At the 2023 verdict the jury also recognised three more people who died in the months and years afterward as victims, which raised the official toll to 35. The Islamic State group claimed the attacks, as it had the Paris attacks the previous November.
Abdeslam was under arrest on the day. The Belgian prosecution nevertheless alleged that he belonged to the same cell as the three attackers who died and took part in the plan.
Ten men were tried by the Brussels Assize Court. The trial opened in early December 2022 and lasted about seven months. One defendant, the man presumed to have led the cell and believed to have died in Syria in 2017, was tried in absentia. Nine defendants faced life imprisonment if convicted. Hundreds of witnesses and victims were expected to testify.
Twelve jurors began their deliberations on July 6, 2023, kept in an undisclosed location under police guard. They worked through about 300 questions over nearly three weeks. On Tuesday July 25, 2023 they found six of the ten guilty of terrorist murder. Abdeslam was among them, convicted of murder, attempted murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group. The defense had argued that he was already in custody when the attacks happened. Two others were convicted only of taking part in the activities of a terrorist group, and two men were acquitted on all charges.
The Special Court of Assizes in Brussels held separate hearings on sentencing in September 2023, and on September 15, 2023 it passed sentence on the defendants. Abdeslam and Sofien Ayari received no additional sentence, because the court judged their earlier sentences, including Abdeslam's life term in France and the 20-year Belgian term of 2018, to be sufficient. Mohamed Abrini, convicted with him, received 30 years.
Abdeslam, through his lawyers, gave up his right to appeal the Paris verdict on July 12, 2022. They said that it did not mean that he accepted the verdict; it meant that he had resigned himself to it. None of the 19 other defendants and no prosecutor appealed, so the Paris verdicts became final.
In November 2025 a French investigation opened in January 2025 into suspected terrorist conspiracy was widened by the national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office. Abdeslam was placed in custody on November 7, 2025, after a brief period of detention on November 4. He had not been charged in that investigation when he was placed in custody. He remained in French custody.
In France the heaviest sentence open to the courts is life imprisonment with an incompressible term. The sentence imposed on Abdeslam is known in French as perpétuité réelle. After 30 years a convicted person can in theory ask the court to reconsider the sentence, and can repeat that request every year, but release is not automatic. It requires signs of serious rehabilitation and social integration, a finding that the person is not a serious disturbance to society, a psychiatric assessment by experts and consultation of the victims.
The Paris trial was heard by a special assize court. In Belgium the Assize Court sits with a jury of 12 citizens; the 2022 and 2023 trial there was the biggest in the country's judicial history. The Paris sentence and the two Belgian sentences were passed by separate courts, which is how a man held for life in France could still be sentenced again in Belgium.
Abdeslam told the Paris court that he had abandoned his role in the attacks of his own accord. The court rejected that claim.
November 13, 2015: attacks in Paris kill 130 people.
March 15, 2016: raid in the Forest district of Brussels; officers are wounded.
March 18, 2016: Abdeslam is arrested in Molenbeek.
March 22, 2016: attacks in Brussels kill 32 people.
February 2018: trial opens in Brussels over the March 15, 2016 incident.
April 23, 2018: convicted of terrorism-related attempted murder, 20 years.
September 8, 2021: Paris trial opens with 20 defendants.
April 15, 2022: Abdeslam addresses the Paris court and apologises to the victims.
June 29, 2022: life imprisonment without parole.
July 12, 2022: he gives up his appeal; the Paris verdict is final.
Early December 2022: Brussels Assize Court trial opens, ten defendants.
July 25, 2023: found guilty of terrorist murders in Brussels.
September 15, 2023: the Brussels court imposes no additional sentence on him.
November 7, 2025: Abdeslam is placed in custody in a French investigation.