Convicted terrorist Salah Abdeslam will not be able to enforce serving his prison sentence in Belgium as the court did not rule in his favour.
After the trial for the March 2016 Brussels attacks currently taking place in Brussels is over, Abdeslam will likely have to return to France.
At the start of September, Abdeslam filed a lawsuit against the Belgian State because he did not want to return to France (where he was sentenced to life for his role in the 2015 Paris attacks) after the end of the terror trial in Belgium. Instead, he wants to serve his sentence in a Belgian prison.
"To send me to France is to send me to death," he said during the hearing on 1 September. At the French prison in Fleury-Mérogis, he was held in a 9m² cell for 6.5 years.
"Living every day with the thought that you will never get out of there is untenable," he said. "I only saw my father five times in 6.5 years, I was not allowed to talk to anyone. My family is a support to me. Sending me there is also punishing them. It is a nightmare, whether here or there. But at least here it is more livable."
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The judge did not rule in his favour as it could not be sufficiently demonstrated that his human rights would be violated in France, VRT reports. However, Abdeslam can still appeal against the decision.
Importantly, it has not yet been determined where Abdeslam will serve his sentence, as it is part of negotiations between Belgium and France. While Abdeslam has French nationality, his family lives in Belgium.
In France, he was already sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of ever being released. In Belgium, he already received a 20-year prison sentence for the shooting in Forest, and the court and jury are currently in deliberations to determine (among other things) his sentence for the attacks in Brussels on 22 March 2016.
