“My goal was to go to a cafe in the 18th arrondissement of northern Paris,” Salah Abdeslam told a special Paris court hearing the case. I go to the cafe, order a drink, look at the people around me – and I said to myself, ‘No, I’m not going to do that.’ For the plaintiffs in the case, including the survivors and loved ones of the victims of the November 2015 attacks that killed 130 people, this was a testimony they waited for months to hear. Abdeslam, 32, said he was informed of plans for the November 11 attack in Paris, two days before they took place. This happened in a meeting in Charleroi, Belgium with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who is accused of being the mastermind of the attacks. Until then, Abdeslam said, he thought he would be sent to Syria. Instead, he was told he had been selected to carry out an attack using an explosive belt. “It was a shock to me, but it ended up convincing me,” he said. I ended up accepting and saying, “Okay, I’ll go ahead.” But at that meeting, he was not given details about the targets of the attack. When he finally did not pass the attack, he told the court how he got his car and drove to Paris by accident until it broke down. Then he went out and walked, he said, saying his memories of that time were “confused”. Pressed by the president of the court, Jean-Louis Peries, he only said that he knew what he had to do. “My brother had a belt, a Kalashnikov, I know it will open fire, I know it will explode, but I did not know the targets.” The attackers killed 130 people in suicide bombings and shootings at the Stade de France, in the Bataclan concert hall and on the terraces of bars and restaurants on November 13, 2015, in France’s worst atrocity in peacetime. Abdeslam’s older brother, Brahim, opened fire on a coffee shop terrace before it exploded. Earlier in court, another defendant, Mohamed Abrini, said Abdeslam simply did not have the audacity to go through with the attack. Abrini, who is accused of providing weapons and logistical support to the attackers, said he had seen Abdeslam when he was in a safe house the day after the attacks. “He was exhausted, tired, he looked pale,” he said. One of the organizers of his attacks had shouted because he had not been blown up. “I think he told them his belt had not worked,” Abrini said. Abdeslam told the court last month that he was in fact lying about the malfunction. After surviving the attack, Abdeslam fled to the Molenbeek area of ​​Brussels where he grew up. He was arrested in March 2016. Together with Abdeslam, the co-accused respond to charges ranging from providing logistical support to planning attacks, as well as supplying weapons.