On Wednesday, February 7th, French Justice Minister Éric Dupont-Moretti announced the arrival on French soil of the terrorist Salah Abdeslam, who until then had been imprisoned in Belgium, to serve an “irreducible life imprisonment” (perpétuité incompressible)—a penalty that does not exist in Belgium. The Brussels Court of Appeal ruled that this sentence was inhumane and degrading, and the convicted man’s defence raised this as a question of “rule of law.”
Born in Belgium, Salah Abdeslam is a jihadist of French nationality and Moroccan origin who grew up in the Molenbeek district of Brussels—often described as a breeding ground for terrorists. Affiliated with the Islamic State, he played a decisive role in the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015, which cost the lives of 131 people.
After taking part in the attack on the Bataclan and the shootings targeting the Parisian terraces on the evening of 13 November 2015, he found refuge in Belgium, where he was arrested after several months on the run. He was also involved in the attacks in Brussels in March 2016, and since then has been alternately tried by the French and Belgian judicial authorities.
In France, Abdeslam was presented at the trial for the Paris attacks, which opened in September 2021. The last surviving member of the group of assailants, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 29 June 2022. In July 2022, he was “temporarily surrendered” to Belgium to stand trial for his involvement in the Brussels attacks of March 2016. He was sentenced there to 20 years in prison for “attempted murder with a terrorist motive.”
Since then, he has been at the centre of a legal imbroglio between the two countries concerning the enforcement of his prison sentences.
After the Brussels trial, the terrorist was due to return to France in October 2023 to serve his sentence, but the Belgian courts suspended the repatriation for fear that he would be subjected to treatment deemed degrading in France. Abdeslam’s defence obtained a ruling from the Brussels Court of Appeal prohibiting the transfer of Salah Abdeslam to France, citing a “risk of leading to a violation of articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.” These articles relate to the prohibition of “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and the right to “respect for private and family life.” The Brussels court therefore ordered a freeze on Abdeslam’s deportation to France, pending an appeal against the final decision on the place where he would serve his sentence and citing his Belgian family ties.
But this delaying tactic defeated its object. The Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office took the view that the memorandum of understanding signed between France and Belgium concerning Abdeslam took precedence over the Court of Appeal ruling and that Abdeslam could indeed be transferred to France. The terrorist was therefore notified at the last minute and taken across the border under very close surveillance on February 7th.
Since then, there has been rebellion from the Belgian judiciary. The president of the French-speaking Bar Association of Brussels, Emmanuel Plasschaert, took offence at the Belgian authorities’ decision to ignore the ruling of the Brussels Court of Appeal: “In a state governed by the rule of law worthy of the name, even the worst of criminals have rights,” he explained in a letter to his colleagues. One of the criminal’s lawyers denounced “a flagrant violation of the rule of law,” while another spoke of “kidnapping” and pointed the finger at “a kind of desire for absolute revenge that takes precedence over respect for the law” on the French side.
In France, some on the Left have taken up the terrorist’s cause, with the newspaper Libération taking the view in an article that “transferring Salah Abdeslam to France means condemning him to a disguised death sentence.” The newspaper took advantage of the timing: Robert Badinter, the lawyer who defended the abolition of the death penalty at the start of François Mitterrand’s presidency in 1981, had just died in France. For Badinter, the death penalty and life imprisonment were one and the same thing, because “you don’t replace one punishment with another,” recalls the Libération article.
As far as the French Ministry of Justice is concerned, there is a major political issue surrounding Abdeslam’s repatriation: the aim is to ensure that the terrorist remains in prison for the rest of his life, which is anything but certain if he stays in Belgium, since life imprisonment does not exist there. Dupont-Moretti, who is regularly castigated for his laxity and complacency towards criminals, was keen this time to demonstrate his firmness in order to restore his image in the eyes of French public opinion and to try to respond to the concerns of the families of the victims of the attacks.
Abdeslam is now expected to serve his sentence in solitary confinement in the Réau prison in Seine-et-Marne, a few kilometres from Paris.
