The Paris attacks trial resumed on Tuesday with the interrogation of Mohammed Amri and Hamza Attou, the two men who admit driving to Paris on the morning after the 13 November 2015 killings to bring surviving terrorist Salah Abdeslam back home to Belgium.
The contrast is striking.
Mohammed Amri is soft, round, smiling. He is patient in the face of repeated, pointless questions. He is given to gentle humour as, on Tuesday, at the expense of a lawyer he had spotted snoozing earlier in the session. "Of course you didn't hear my answer, Maître, you were asleep."
Hamza Attou is all nerve and sinew, never smiles, takes no nonsense from nobody. On Tuesday he warned the court president that, if the judge didn't like Attou's answers, he could go elsewhere. The accused was told to moderate his tone. "I will, if you stop asking the same questions in the search for the answers you want to hear."
Facts established beyond doubt
There is no doubt about the facts.
Late on the evening of 13 November 2015, Mohammed Amri was at work when he got a call from a clearly distressed Salah Abdeslam. His friend said that he had been involved in a serious motor accident in France and needed help to get home. Urgently. Abdeslam was in tears.
Amri explained that he was on duty until 2AM, and could do nothing before that. But he did offer to ask their mutual friend, Hamza Attou, if he could find someone to make the trip, or borrow a car and drive down himself.
Eventually, Amri and Attou set out together in the middle of the night, in Amri's car. Neither had any idea that the man they were driving south to help had been part of the terrorist attacks in the French capital.
Salah Abdeslam met the pair in the south Paris suburb of Châtillon. Almost immediately, he told his two rescuers that he had been one of the terrorists.
Salah Abdeslam was worried that his brother Brahim was dead. Brahim Abdeslam had been one of the terrace killers, and blew himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire café.
Wanted to avenge his brother's death
Salah Abdeslam explained that he himself had been wearing a suicide vest, had entered a café intending to set off an explosion, but had changed his mind "because the place was full of young people". He was nervous, confused and angry, and spoke of wanting to avenge his brother's death.
The three drove back towards Brussels, taking the main A2 motorway. They didn't talk much. Abdeslam appeared to be asleep at least some of the time.
They were stopped three times by the police, now on nationwide alert in the wake of the attacks, but were allowed to continue their journey because investigators had not yet established the identity of Salah Abdeslam as a suspect.
Mohammed Amri left his car with Attou and Abdeslam and went home shortly after their arrival in Brussels. He was arrested later the same day.
Attou went to his parents' apartment. Abdeslam vanished.
Minor drug dealer out of his depth
Hamza Attou told the court that he had been smoking hash for several days and was completely wrecked when Salah Abdeslam asked him for help. He claims to have known nothing about the Paris attacks before hearing Abdeslam's own account of events. He says he was terrified.
"I was afraid of everything. I was sure I was going to die." He was 21 years old at the time.
He says he spent his days dealing and smoking narcotics, took no interest in current events. He was arrested boarding a métro in Brussels.
The trial continues.
