The sole surviving suspect in the 2015 Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Belgian court today over a fierce gun battle with police in Brussels days before his capture in 2016.
Abdeslam's co-defendant Sofiane Ayari received the same sentence after the pair were convicted of terrorism-related attempted murder over the shootout in which four police officers were injured.
Neither Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national, nor Ayari, a Tunisian citizen, was in court to hear the verdict.
Abdeslam is being held in jail in France pending a separate trial over the November 2015 Paris attacks, claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group, in which 130 people died.
|