Nineteen of the twenty defendants were found guilty of all charges and sentenced to prison terms ranging from four years to full-life.

A third group of three terrorists carried out an attack on the Bataclan theatre, where the Eagles of Death Metal were playing to a packed audience of about 1,500.

[3] On 29 November 2019, after a four-year investigation, the French national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (PNAT) charged 14 people in relation to the attacks and issued a further six arrest warrants.

[7] The initial budget for the trial was over 60 million euros, with the largest cost being legal aid fees for the lawyers of the civil parties.

Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the 10 man cell that carried out the attacks, was defended by Olivia Ronen and Martin Vettes.

Three lawyers, Gérard Chemla, Frédéric Bibal, and Jean Reinhart, who lost a nephew in the Bataclan, represented more than 100 civil parties each.

Of those being tried in their absence, one was serving a prison term in Turkey for terrorist offences while the other five were assumed dead in Syria, but were still put on trial as there was no official confirmation of their deaths.

Tried in their absence were Ahmed Dahmani, who was serving a prison sentence in Turkey, and five others who were believed dead in Syria (Jean-Michel and Fabien Clain, Oussama Atar, Obeida Aref Dibo and Omar Darif).

The accused were asked to confirm their personal details and Abdeslam made an angry outburst from the box, saying that he gave up all professions to become a warrior of the Islamic State.

On Tuesday 9 November, evidence was heard from two investigators from the General Directorate for Internal Security (French: Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, DGSI).

[20] On Tuesday 16 November, the court heard testimony from Hugo Micheron, a writer on jihadism, and the former heads of the internal and external security directorates.

From Thursday 9 December for five days, the court started to hear testimony from relatives and friends of the accused and also of the terrorists who had carried out the attacks.

For four days the accused were cross-examined on their radicalisation and on events up to August 2015, before the court was again suspended for a week due to more cases of COVID in the box.

[22] On 9 February Abdeslam, who had maintained his right to silence since his arrest six years earlier, spoke for the first time about his role in the attacks, saying that he had never killed or injured anyone.

[23] The court was suspended for two weeks from 15 February to 1 March, again due to cases of COVID amongst the accused, and then heard evidence from Belgian investigators concerning the properties used as hide-outs by the terrorists.

[25] On 30 March Abdeslam refused to answer questions about the evening of 13 November 2015, having previously claimed that he had backed out of detonating his suicide vest at the last minute.

An explosives expert testified that the suicide vest had been in a non-functioning state when found in a rubbish bin a week after the attacks, casting doubt on Abdeslam's claims.

[26] On 1 April, at the request of the victims' association Life for Paris and after a debate the previous day, the court was shown photographs of the Bataclan and heard extracts from a sound recording of the attack.

Abdeslam claimed he had gone into a bar in the 18th arrondissement with the intention of detonating his suicide vest but had changed his mind at the last minute, out of humanity.

There was a week's break for the spring holidays, before the court heard evidence from sociologist Bernard Rougier, writer Mohamed Sifaoui and the former antiterrorist judge Marc Trévidic.