Two lawyers representing Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving suspect in the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, said they will no longer defend him in a television interview in France on Wednesday.
“We both decided to give up,” Frank Berton, one of Abdeslam’s lawyers, told BFM TV.
Berton said he and colleague Sven Mary made their decision because Abdeslam continued to refuse to speak to authorities.
“We don’t think he will speak and he will use the right to remain silent,” Berton said, adding the lawyers had said from the outset “if our client remained silent we would quit his defense.”
Abdeslam has refused to speak to authorities since he was transferred from Belgium to France on April 27 in protest of the 24/7 video surveillance in his cell, AFP reported.