French court: 20 guilty for 2015 Bataclan attacks
STORY: A French court on Wednesday sentenced the primary suspect in the brutal 2015 Paris terror attacks to life imprisonment with no possibly of early release - a sentence handed down only four times before in the country.
Belgian-born Salah Abdeslam was found guilty on terrorism and murder charges, the judge said.
The 32-year-old is believed to be the only surviving member of the group that carried out the November 13, 2015 gun-and-bomb rampage on the Bataclan concert hall, six bars and restaurants, and a sport stadium that left 130 people dead.
Abdeslam said at the start of the trial that he was a "soldier" of Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
He's one of twenty people sentenced Wednesday in connection with the attack. Thirteen others in the court room were accused of crimes ranging from helping provide the attackers with weapons or cars, to planning to take part in the attack. Six more were tried in absentia.
Abdeslam had said during the trial that he had chosen at the last minute not to detonate his explosive vest.
The court concluded that, in fact, the vest malfunctioned.
It has been a trial like no others, not only for its exceptional length of 10 months, but also for the time it devoted to allowing victims to testify in detail about their ordeal and their struggles in overcoming it, while families of those killed spoke of how hard it was to move on.
