Lawyers 'will not defend' Paris terror attacks suspect

Paris, Oct 12: Lawyers for the only surviving suspect in the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks have said that they would no longer defend him. Salah Abdeslam will use his right to remain silent, one of the lawyers, Frank Berton, told French news channel BFM TV on Wednesday. “We said from the beginning... that if our client remained silent, we would quit his defence,” Berton said, alongside fellow lawyer Sven Mary. During a second appearance before anti-terror judges on October 6, Abdeslam exercised his right to silence refusing to respond to the questions on his role in the fatal attacks, BBC reported. Also at his first hearing in May, the 26-year-old man refused to say anything about the country’s worst terror assaults. The multiple attacks in Paris on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France killed 130 people. The Islamic State claimed the responsibility. Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels in March and has kept silent since his transfer to France in April. He remains in solitary confinement and is being kept under 24-hour permanent camera surveillance inside his cell in a high-security prison in Fleury-Merogis, south Paris. (IANS)