“We don’t attack you
because you eat pork, you drink wine or you listen to music, but Muslims defend
themselves against those people who attack us,” Abdeslam said, according to the
RTL and France Inter radio stations.
They quoted a lawyer, Jean
Reinhart, who is representing the victims of the attacks and has access to the
case files.
“Put your anger to one side
and think about it a few minutes,” Abdeslam said in comments addressed to the
dead and injured. “You are suffering from the mistakes made by your leaders.”
In April, a Belgian court
sentenced Abdeslam, a French national of Moroccan origin, to 20 years in prison
over a gun battle with police in his hometown of Brussels where he was arrested
in March 2016.
At the opening of his trial,
Abdeslam defied his judges, claiming to place his “trust in Allah and that is
all”.
Abdeslam was a pot-smoking
delinquent in the crime-ridden district of Molenbeek in Brussels until he
became radicalised by Islamic State propaganda around his 25th birthday in
2014, investigators believe.
His Belgian
lawyer revealed in 2016 that he had never read the Koran and said he had “the
intelligence of an empty ashtray.”
He has been
held in solitary confinement in France ahead of a trial which is expected in
2019.
AFP
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