(AFP) The last surviving suspected assailant in the 2015 gun and bomb attacks that shook Paris insisted in court Wednesday that he had “abandoned” plans to blow himself up with a bomb belt.
“I didn’t go all the way, I abandoned triggering my belt, not out of cowardice, not out of fear, but I just didn’t want to,” Salah Abdeslam told the hearing into the November 13, 2015, massacres.
The 32-year-old French defendant had met questions from prosecutors and plaintiffs’ lawyers with silence for around two hours before deciding to answer.
He had “promised” in a previous hearing to provide an explanation, Claire Josserand-Schmidt, acting for some of the plaintiffs, told him as she opened her questioning, adding that she wasn’t trying to “trap” the suspect.
