A Belgian sentence-enforcement court is due to decide on September 29 whether Mohamed Bakkali, the man French prosecutors called the “superintendent of terror” for the November 13, 2015 attacks, can leave prison under electronic monitoring or on parole.
He has been locked up since November 26, 2015, when he was arrested in Belgium as part of the investigation into the Paris and Saint-Denis attacks. In France he would not have been eligible until 2035. In Belgium he has already had day release and overnight leave.
Bakkali, a 39-year-old Belgian-Moroccan from Verviers, eastern Belgium, was not one of the gunmen but helped with the logistics of several terrorist attacks.
He rented the Belgian safe houses and supplied vehicles used by the Islamic State cell that killed 130 people and injured more than 400 at the Bataclan concert hall, on the café terraces of eastern Paris and at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, north of the capital.
He exercised his right to silence during the trial and later said he had feared for his relatives.
In December 2020 a French court gave him 25 years for helping the failed Thalys attack of August 21, 2015.
On June 29, 2022 the special assize court of Paris gave him 30 years for the November plot, with a two-thirds minimum term. The two sentences were later capped at 30 years.
But, having Belgian nationality, he was sent back to Belgium on January 20, 2023 under a return clause and is held at Ittre, south of Brussels. He had been transferred to France on January 26, 2018 to stand trial.
Belgian law, not the French tariff, now governs how that sentence is served. That is the general rule under the EU framework on the mutual recognition of custodial sentences, which leaves enforcement to the country where the prisoner is held.
In Belgium, prisoners may seek conditional release after one third of the term.
A Belgian période de sûreté (minimum term) was written into statute in 2017, after the attacks, and does not apply to his case.
Bakkali has been eligible for a tag since August 8, 2023 and for conditional release since February 4, 2024, according to the French broadcaster CNews. Short prison leaves began in July 2025. In May the Brussels tribunal de l’application des peines granted six 36-hour furloughs against the prosecutor’s advice.
The court said he had been “calm and respectful”, had looked for work and lodging and had met victims.
The Brussels public prosecutor remains opposed to parole or a tag “at this stage” and has no right of appeal.
French justice minister Gérald Darmanin wrote on September 21 to his Belgian counterpart Annelies Verlinden that release after “only 11 years” would be “an affront to the pain of the victims” and “the opposite of both the letter and the spirit” of the French assize verdicts. The two ministers also spoke by telephone that day.
He asked that victims be able to follow the September 29 hearing by video and said the European rules on mutual recognition of sentences should be changed.
Verlinden replied on September 22 that the court is independent of the executive and the prison administration and would decide “in full autonomy”.
Belgian officials and the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) have already briefed victims at the Belgian consulate in Paris, on September 16. Some participants left before the end, CNews reported.
Some of those who sat through the ten-month trial say they thought the page had closed.
