2015 Paris attacker transferred from Belgium to France: lawyer / Photo: © AFP
2015 Paris attacker transferred from Belgium to France: lawyer
Salah Abdeslam, sentenced to life in jail over Paris jihadist attacks in 2015, was transferred Wednesday from Belgium back to France, his lawyer said.
Abdeslam is the only surviving member of the Islamic State cell that killed 130 in the French capital in November 2015.
Found guilty at trial in Belgium last September over subsequent 2016 attacks in Brussels, his transfer back to France had been blocked due to human rights concerns.
"They came to get him in his cell at 9 am this morning and he left for France," Abdeslam's lawyer Delphine Paci told AFP.
"It's a flagrant violation of the rule of law," she said. "There was clearly collusion between the Belgian state and the French state to violate a court decision."
"This is clearly about a kind of thirst for revenge that has taken precedence over the rule of law," Paci charged.
Abdeslam had fled to Brussels after taking part in the 2015 Paris attacks and holed up for four months in an apartment hosting members of the local cell.
He was arrested several days before suicide attacks that killed 32 and injured hundreds at Brussels' airport and a metro station in March 2016. A Belgian jury decided he was one of the co-planners of those attacks.
After the Brussels trial, he was due to be transferred back to France to serve out the rest of his sentence.
But a Brussels appeal court suspended the transfer over concerns it contravened the European Convention of Human Rights.
Abdeslam's lawyers have argued he should be allowed to serve his sentence in Belgium, where he grew up and has family ties despite holding French citizenship.
Both the Paris and Brussels massacres were part of a wave of attacks claimed by the Islamic State group in Europe.
(N.Lambert--LPdF)
