France

The main suspect on trial for the 2015 Paris attacks says he was in ‘shock’ when told he had to blow himself up in Paris.

The main suspect on trial for the 2015 Paris terror attacks, Salah Abdeslam, on Wednesday told a court that he decided against blowing himself up as planned on the evening of November 13, 2015.

“I’m walking into this bar in the 18th [arrondissement], I’m ordering a drink, I’m looking at people around me, and I’m like, ‘no, I’m not going to do it.’ I gave up, I left, I took the car,” he said during the final hearing of his trial.

Abdeslam had refused to speak to the court during his hearing two weeks ago but broke his silence on Wednesday. “I’m going to explain myself because this is the last time I can do it. I’m going to do the best I can, I’m going to do my best,” he said after complaining about his portrayal in the media.

Families, friends and survivors listen in silence to recordings from inside theatre where 90 people died

On the evening of 13 November 2015, about 1,500 concertgoers were watching the California rock band Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan theatre in central Paris. At the beginning it was “a great show”, fans reported afterwards. Youngsters were dancing in the pit in front of the stage and on the balcony; some were buying drinks at the bar.

On Friday, for the first time, a French court heard audio recordings and saw photographs of what happened next. There was silence as the court was played three sound recordings from the Bataclan attack, one of a series of bombings and shootings across Paris that killed 130 people and injured more than 300.

The main suspect on trial for the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks has refused to explain his exact role in the series of suicide bombings and shootings that left 130 people dead and many more injured.

It was supposed to be the most anticipated day in the nine-month trial as Salah Abdeslam took the stand on Wednesday to explain why he had not activated his suicide vest on 13 November 2015.

However, there were groans from victims as well as friends and family present in the Paris court, when he announced: “I am exercising my right to remain silent.”

A jailed Corsican nationalist, whose prison assault sparked protests on the French Mediterranean island, has died.

Yvan Colonna, 61, who was serving a life term for murdering Corsica’s top official, was beaten by another inmate, a Cameroonian jihadist, on 2 March.

The attack left Colonna in a coma and he had been receiving treatment in a hospital in the south of France.

A report by Le Figarp, tells of French hospitals heavily infiltrated by Islamists where doctors refuse to treat women and Jews

… But how many territories are we talking about?

Officially the DGSE, the general directorate of internal security, has mapped 150 French districts “in the possession” of the Islamists, as revealed by the weekly Journal du dimanche. In Le Figaro, the historian Georges Bensoussan, who edited the book “The Lost Territories of the Republic” ten years ago, explained that “more than 500 districts in France are declared ‘sensitive’. To put it bluntly, we are talking about several million people who are subject to Islamist law ”.

The city financed its own self-conquest, or shall we say, the vote-hungry politicians of the city financed its Islamization.

“Woman’s month for the city of Nantes, a veiled woman on the streets of the city. Unacceptable complacency towards Islamism! This is the real threat that hangs over France! ”.

Thus Eric Ciotti, a senior leader of the Gaullist party, denounces the municipal billboards of a large city lost to Islamization.

We are in Nantes, the City of the Dukes of Brittany, steeped in history on the Loire estuary, the city of the great writer Jules Verne, the father of science fiction. His story is emblematic of how Europe is sinking.

A French teen who was subjected to a torrent of death threats in 2020 for her criticism of Islam on social media was allegedly sexually assaulted by an illegal migrant in Lyon over the weekend.

“A specter is haunting France, the specter of Islam!”

This is the message that, with variations of intonation and nuance, comes from almost all of the dozen or so declared candidates in France’s forthcoming presidential election.

This reminds those of us who witnessed the 20-year-long Brexit saga of the ordeal that Britain went through to end up more divided than ever and less able to deal with the problems that the anti-immigration discourse occulted under a fog of pseudo-nationalism.

Four alleged accomplices in the murder of an 85-year-old French priest go on trial in Paris on Monday after years of investigations into one of the most grisly jihadist attacks that have rocked France in recent years.

Father Jacques Hamel had his throat slit at the foot of the altar while celebrating mass on July 26, 2016, at his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class suburb of Rouen in northwest France.

The two 19-year-old assailants, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, also seriously injured one of the worshippers they took hostage before being shot and killed by police as they tried to leave the church.