Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving member of the jihadist team that attacked Paris in November 2015, on Thursday refused to answer French anti-terror judges’ questions for the third time.
“He exercised his right to silence,” Frank Berton told reporters after his 26-year-old client appeared at Paris’s main courthouse, adding that he was optimistic that Abdeslam would eventually cooperate with investigators.
He has refused to answer questions since being transferred to France in April and is believed to be angry at round-the-clock surveillance in jail.
On July 7 his lawyer Frank Berton sought unsuccessfully to get authorities to halt the surveillance, a source close to the case told.
Abdeslam refused to answer questions in his first interview with a French anti-terror judge on May 20.
After four months on the run, Abdeslam was arrested on March 18 in Molenbeek, a Brussels neighbourhood notorious for being a hotbed of Islamic extremism, where he grew up.
