A Belgian court on Monday found Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect in the 2015 ISIS attacks on Paris, guilty of terrorism-related attempted murder over a shootout with police in Brussels, and sentenced him to 20 years in jail.
Abdeslam's co-defendant Sofien Ayari also received a 20-year term for attempted terrorist murder.
Reading its verdict, the court in the Belgian capital said “there can be no doubt” about Abdeslam and his co-defendant involvement in extremism. The danger emanating from Abdeslam "remains intact," It said, adding that in the case it is considering, the "terror character of their action was established."
Neither 28-year-old Abdeslam nor Ayari, 24, were in court for the verdict. Abdeslam has spent most of the last two years in jail in France, while Ayari is in jail in Belgium.
While his lawyer argued Abdeslam, 28, should be acquitted because of a procedural error, prosecutors had charged him with attempted murder over the Brussels shootout in March 2016, days before his arrest, and called for a jail term of 20 years.
Four police officers were wounded in the gun battle after police acting on a tip-off over the Paris attacks raided a flat in the Forest area of Brussels on 15 March 2016.
Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national, was arrested three days later in the largely immigrant Molenbeek area of the Belgian capital, near his family home.
On 22 March suicide bombers from a cell linked to the Paris attacks killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more at Brussels airport and a metro station in the Belgian capital.
According to The Guardian, the judgment said Abdeslam had written a document addressed to his mother saying that “Allah guided me and chose me among his servants to open his path. It is for that reason that I had to fight the enemies of Allah with all my strength.”
The judgment on Monday said that 34 shots in total were fired during the shootout.
Belgian police mounted tight security around the imposing Palace of Justice building in Brussels for the verdict.
He was transported to the court from France for the first day of the trial amid tight security including a helicopter escort.
