Despite the ravages provoked by Covid-19, which have already led to three weeks of suspensions, the Paris terror trial has reached the end of its second major stage: the examination of the activities and religious attitudes of the accused up to the summer of 2015, before the detailed planning of the Paris attacks began. The crucial questions have concerned "radicalisation" and the Islamic State project in Syria-Iraq.
It's hard to say where we are. This trial opened last September and probably won't end before July. So we're roughly half way through.
But it doesn'l feel like that.
Accused are always there
Each survivor, each bereaved family member, got one brief moment to say what it feels like to lose a beloved child, husband, friend in a terrorist attack. And then they left and went back to the business of dealing with their grief, their anger, their incomprehension.
The accused are there all the time.
For them, 13 November 2015 marks either the end of a complicated process intended to advance the cause of an extreme form of Islam, or the beginning of a judicial nightmare which they hope this trial will dispel.
There are 20 accused in total, 14 of them actually before the Paris court, one in jail in Turkey, the five others are presumed dead in the Syrian war zone.
Their alleged crimes range from participating or planning to participate in a terrorist attack, through various levels of complicity in such an attack, to aiding and abetting the evasion of a terrorist suspect. The penalties facing the 14 accused range from life imprisonment to six years in jail.
One of the crucial questions the tribunal will have to answer is the extent to which each of the accused was motivated by adherence to a radical version of Islam.
Because, if they did it for religious reasons, they become terrorists. And the penalties for terrorist crimes in France are a lot harsher, 10 to 15 years harsher, than those facing ordinary criminals and their accomplices.
Five of the accused are suspected of having being members of the Islamic State organisation, which used the confusion of the Syrian civil war to attempt to establish a Salafist caliphate under strict Sharia law in the desert borderlands separating Syria and Iraq.
Islamic State allegiance?
Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving member of the Paris killing squads, never went to Syria. His allegiance to Islamic State seems to have taken place in his own head just before the attacks, "or even after," as he bizarrely told the court.
The prosecution alleges that each of the five "Syrian" accused left the Middle East with the intention of carrying out a murderous terrorist attack in western Europe. Did they fail in that mission for technical reasons? Or because they saw the error of their ways? Or because agreeing to participate was the only way of escaping from the clutches of an organisation which they had come to fear and despise?
The six have given different answers or, in the case of Osama Krayem who is boycotting the trial, no anwer at all.
Tunisian Sofien Ayari, the Belgians Mohamed Abrini and Abdeslam, say they changed their minds about the suicide attacks they were engaged in at the last minute. Muhammad Usman and Adel Haddadi never made it to France, having been arrested in Austria, betrayed by their false identity cards.
Some of them have spoken of a political motivation . . . the Paris attacks were in revenge for the deaths of civilians in the bombing of Islamic State targets by international coalition fighter jets.
Radicalised state
Some have refused the very idea of religious radicalisation. "You call it radical," Mohamed Abrini told the court, in reference to the project of a state where Muslims could abide by the strict rule of Sharia. "For me, that's just ordinary Islam."
An ordinary Islam of stoning, decapitation, rape, the horrible murder of homosexuals, thrown from sixth-floor windows.
Seven others have done the best they can to shake off the very idea of religious motivation. Not just for themselves. They also have to prove that they had no idea of the force driving the men . . . brothers, life-long friends . . . they are accused of helping.
The remaining suspect, Hamza Attou, who was in the car which brought failed suicide bomber Salah Abdeslam back to Brussels on the morning after the Paris killings, claims he was motivated simply by a generous concern for a friend who needed a lift.
If all the suspects have recovered from the coronavirus infections which have caused the recent delays, this epic trial will resume on Tuesday. Belgian police will start giving evidence on the activities of the accused in the period leading up to the attacks.
