The only surviving attacker from the group that carried out the November 2015 Paris attacks has been found guilty of terrorism and murder charges.

Salah Abdeslam received a rare full-life sentence for his role in the gun and bomb attacks that killed 130 people.

The court also convicted 19 other men involved, six of whom are believed to be dead.

The trial - the biggest in modern French history - began last September.

For more than nine months, victims, journalists, and the families of the dead lined up outside the specially-built courtroom in Paris to piece together the story of the worst attack in France since World War Two.

The attacks across bars, restaurants, the national football stadium and Bataclan music venue on 13 November 2015 saw hundreds injured alongside those killed.

At the beginning of the trial Abdeslam was defiant, describing himself as a “soldier” of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

But he later apologised to the victims, telling the court in his closing remarks that he was “not a murderer, or a killer”, and that to convict him of murder would be “an injustice”.

He also claimed during the trial that he decided not to detonate his suicide vest on the night of the attack and disposed of it in a Paris suburb.

However, the court accepted evidence that the suicide vest was defective, and therefore it did not believe that Abdeslam had experienced a last-minute change of heart.

His full-life sentence means there is only a small chance of parole after 30 years. It is the most severe penalty for criminals in France and is rarely handed down by the country's courts.

One of the survivors of the attack, Édith Seurat, told the BBC that the trial had not healed her pain and had left her unsatisfied.

“We still have our injuries and our traumas and our nightmares and our wounds,” she said. "We still have to keep on living with that.”

Stéphane Sararde, the father of one of those killed in the 2015 attacks, told the BBC that the lengthy trial had helped him to process the tragedy.

“It was nine terrible months,” he said. “We had to wait; we had to go back into this tragedy in order to go into the details of what happened.”

But he hoped the experience would make it easier to be able to live without his son Hugo, he added.

Also speaking to the BBC, survivor Arthur Dénouveaux said he was unsure what to think now that the verdict had been delivered.

“I feel a mix of being happy that it's done, having a lot of questions on what the future holds, and proud to have been part of this wonderful trial,” he said. “The verdict shows it was worth the time.” (BBC)

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