This week's hearings at the special criminal court in Paris are devoted to the psychiatric and psychological profiles of the 14 suspects. On Wednesday, four experts presented their findings on six of the accused. No one was particularly surprised.
Mediocrity rather than madness. That would be a reasonable summary of the analysis offered on Wednesday by four expert witness on the mental status of Hamza Attou, Mohammed Amri, Ali Oulkadi, Farid Kharkhach, Ali El Haddad Asufi and Abdellah Chouaa.
Hamza Attou, a passenger in the car thath brought Salah Abdeslam back to Brussels after the attacks, was the first to be dealt with.
At the time of his arrest, Attou, who was 21 years old in 2015, was drinking a bottle of whisky or vodka every day, 10 beers, and smoking five grammes of cannabis.
He appears not to have had any romantic or emotional-sexual existence.
His intellectual level is "average, normal, a bit on the weak side, but average," his thought processes "somewhat slow but fluid".
He shows no signs of serious mental illness, even if his alcoholism suggests that Hamza Attou is not a balanced, normal individual.
He shows minor depressive symptoms.
There were no questions from the court.
Carbon copies?
And that set the tone for an unusually rapid hearing.
Mohammed Amri emerged from the carefully typed files of another expert as a virtual carbon copy of Hamza Attou. Average, normal.
Carbon copy turned out to be literally true, with the witness admitting he had accidentally added a paragraph from one profile to that of another accused while preparing his reports.
Farid Kharkhach, the supplier of false identity cards to three of the attackers, shows signs of clinical depression. He has been treated for anxiety and obsessional behaviour for 10 years or longer.
Ali Oulkadi, who helped Salah Abdeslam evade arrest after Abdeslam's return to Belgium, shows no symptoms of psychological pathology.
Ali El Haddad Asufi, suspected of helping with the supply of weapons to the terrorists, shows signs of "a fragile personality", but nothing worse.
Haddad was working at Zaventem airport, near Brussels, on the day of the March 2016 terrorist attack there.
His defence team suggested that he had been traumatised by the sound of that day's explosions and the sight of the dead and injured.
Abdellah Chouaa, finally, who is accused of helping the terrorists reach one of their Belgian hideouts by driving ahead to check the route for a police presence, "is anxious to present a positive self-image".
The trial continues.
