The only surviving member of the extremist group that carried out the 2015 Paris terror attacks has refused to answer questions as he appeared in court in Brussels for the first time since his capture nearly two years ago.

The centre of the Belgian capital was on high alert as Salah Abdeslam went on trial for the attempted murder of police officers during a shootout in the Brussels suburb of Forest three days before his arrest.

With the Paris attacks trial not expected until 2019, it was Abdeslam’s first public sighting since he was captured on 18 March 2016 near his family home in Molenbeek, another Brussels suburb.

“My silence does not make me a criminal; it is my defence,” said Abdeslam, 28, who spoke briefly to explain why he would not answer questions about the shootout.

He claimed the legal process was biased against Muslims, who he said were treated in a “pitiless” manner with no presumption of innocence. “Judge me. Do what you want to do. I place my confidence in Allah. I have no fear of you,” he told the judge.

The lead Belgian federal prosecutor, Kathleen Grossjean, called for Abdeslam and his accomplice Sofiane Ayari to receive the maximum sentence, 20 years in prison, for their part in the shootout, which left four officers wounded. “They were ready to kill,” she said.

Belgian police officers clad in black, their faces covered by balaclavas, guarded the two defendants throughout the hearing. In comparison to photos issued when he was on the run as Europe’s most wanted man, Abdeslam now has longer hair and he has grown a beard.

Dressed in a white shirt, he refused to stand before the judge, saying he was tired.

The judge said Abdeslam did not want to be photographed.

Abdeslam was transported to the Palais de Justice in Brussels from the Fleury-Mérogis prison, south of Paris, where he has been held in solitary confinement under 24-hour watch to prevent suicide attempts.

Escorted by French special forces, he started the 200-mile journey at between 3.30am and 4am in a convoy of vehicles and motorbikes. At the end of each day of the four-day trial he will be taken to Vendin le-Vieil prison, just across the border in Calais.

A decision about whether he travels by road or helicopter will be taken at the last moment each day, Le Figaro reported.
About 200 police officers are involved in securing the Palais de Justice, a vast neoclassical pile of gloomy marble hallways and echoing corridors with 245 rooms. Sniffer dogs trained to detect explosives visited the court hours before the trial began and visitors to the courtroom had to pass through two metal detectors.

Abdeslam arrived at the back entrance, which had been closed to traffic. At the front, concrete barriers to keep out cars were guarded by police. Soldiers in army fatigues toting rifles could be seen patrolling the streets more than 100 metres from the building.

Standing trial alongside Abdeslam was Ayari, a 24-year-old Tunisian national, who said the two were together in a backroom during the shootout at Rue du Dries, Forest, on 15 March 2016. A third suspect, Mohamed Belkaïd, identified as “most probably” having aided the Paris attacks, was killed in the shootout.

The pair escaped out of a window and over rooftops but were caught three days later in Molenbeek.

Ayari, who fought in Syria for Islamic State, denied suggestions he fired at police, who had arrived to search the apartment thinking it was empty. A federal prosecutor later told the court Ayari had fired one of two weapons found at Rue du Dries. “His DNA was on the weapon and the magazine,” Grossjean said.

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Ayari, who sometimes spoke through an interpreter, refused to give details about his motives for travelling to Belgium or why he moved so frequently after he arrived in Brussels.

He admitted he had spent “several weeks” at the house in Forest, a quiet suburb in south-west Brussels. “We did nothing special,” he said when asked how the group spent the time. “We watched the news and I did the grocery shopping.” He refused to give any details about his views on terrorist attacks in Europe, but denied participating in them.

Abdeslam’s refusal to break his two-year silence did not surprise victims’ groups. Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, a spokesman for the French Association of Victims of Terrorism, said Abdeslam’s silence would not hinder the investigation. “We have a dossier that is becoming more and more solid in France,” he said. “If he does not speak, it confirms the importance of his global role because in general the people at the top of the pyramid do not talk.”

Abdeslam was the only surviving member of the cell that carried out the Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed in bombings and shootings outside the Stade de France, in the Bataclan concert hall, and at bars and restaurants. He is also implicated in the network behind the Brussels attacks that killed 32 people in the metro and at the airport in March 2016.

A French national, Abdeslam was brought up in Brussels and ran a bar with his older brother, who blew himself up in a bar in the Paris attacks.

Source:theguardian.com