The lawyer for the sole surviving suspect of the Paris attacks had some surprising things to say about his client
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That is according to his lawyer, Sven Mary, who told the French daily newspaper Liberation that his client - who was extradited from Belgium to France on Tuesday night for his trial - "has the intelligence of an empty ashtray."
Molenbeek refers to the district in Belgium where Abdeslam is believed to have been born and raised.
"There have been moments when I thought of giving up. If I had known about the Brussels attacks, maybe I would never have taken this case," Mary said.
He continued: "He is the perfect example of the GTA (Grand Theft Auto video game) generation who thinks he lives in a video game. I asked him if he had read the Quran, and he replied that he had read its interpretation on the internet."
Abdeslam is believed to have played a key role in carrying out the Paris attacks, renting three cars and driving three suicide bombers to the national stadium where he was also supposed to detonate a suicide vest but backed out at the last minute.
Christian Hartmann/Reuters
The 26-year-old was found and detained in Brussels in early March after four months of evading capture. Abdeslam is believed to have played a role in organizing and planning the Brussels terror attacks before his arrest, authorities have said, but his lawyer has insisted that he was "not aware" of any plans to attack the European Union's capital.
It is unclear if Mary is being genuine, or if his comments about Abdeslam's intelligence are an attempt to downplay the suspect's ability to have planned and carried out such a sophisticated attack in the heart of Europe.
But clues linking Abdeslam to March's attacks in Brussels, which killed 34 people, have been piling up as details emerge about the men involved in the attack.
Yorick Jansens/Reuters
And a suicide note thought to be written by Ibrahim El Bakraoui, a suicide bomber who killed 14 people at Brussels airport, offers further clues of a link between Abdeslam and the Brussels attacks. El Bakraoui apparently wrote in French that he was in "a bad situation" and that, if he did not act immediately, he would end up in a prison cell "like him" - authorities think "him" refers to Abdeslam.
"The note would confirm the speculation that the attackers moved up the timetable because Abdeslam was arrested," Will McCants, author of "The ISIS Apocalypse," told Business Insider last month.
The day before the Brussels attacks, Najim Laachraoui, an ISIS bombmaker who made the suicide vests used in both the Paris and Brussels attacks, was named by Belgian officials as a suspected accomplice of Abdeslam in the Paris attacks. Abdeslam is believed to have traveled to Austria from Hungary with Laachraoui last September.
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