The lawyers for Bataclan terrorist Salah Abdeslam have denied claims he is set to become a father while serving a life sentence for the ISIS atrocity.
Samia Maktouf, a lawyer who represented the victims of the 2015 attack, told French outlet Cnews that Abdeslam’s partner was pregnant despite his being in jail.
‘A prisoner has the right to sexual relations in prison,’ she said, as reported by De Telegraaf.
‘Even a terrorist retains fundamental rights under the rule of law, including human dignity, including the possibility of having a family life, even behind bars.’
But the claims were vehemently denied by Abdeslam’s lawyers, who branded them ‘completely false’ in a press release.
‘This is not true,’ they asserted. ‘We are astonished that a lawyer has taken it upon himself to spread the alleged information that Salah Abdeslam’s girlfriend is pregnant.’
The only surviving perpetrator of the November 2015 Paris attacks was tried in Belgium in 2016 and is serving jail time in the Vendin-le-Vieil prison in Pas-de-Calais.
While imprisoned, he had a religious marriage over the phone to an anonymous woman chosen by his father, it was revealed in 2022.
Salah Abdeslam is the only surviving perpetrator of the November 2015 Paris attacks
Salah Abdeslam arrives at the opening of the trial against the nine alleged jihadists accused of taking part in the March 2016 suicide bombings, at the Justitia building in Brussels on November 30, 2022
His lawyers added that Abdeslam has ‘a right to a private life’ and said that ‘it is up to us to defend that privacy, including by taking legal action against those who might infringe on it’.
Abdeslam is the only surviving member of the 10-man ISIS group cell that killed 130 people and injured 490 in Paris in November 2015.
The Bataclan massacre was the worst terror attack in the country’s history.
Abdeslam then fled to Brussels, where he was arrested in March 2016, days before suicide attacks that killed 32 and injured hundreds at Brussels airport and a metro station.
Both massacres were claimed by the Islamic State group in Europe.
Since 2016, Abdeslam has been detained mostly in France.
