Paris attacker dropped by legal team

Lawyers for the main suspect in last year's terrorist attacks in Paris said they will no longer defend him, on grounds that his continued refusal to testify was due to the conditions of his detention.

Salah Abdeslam, who has been held in solitary confinement near Paris since he was captured earlier this year, does not want to talk and no longer wants legal representation, his lawyers Frank Berton and Sven Mary said.

"We are convinced, and he told us so, that he will not talk and will use his right to remain silent. What can we do. I have said it from the beginning, if my client remains silent, I drop his defense," Berton said.

Legal representation is not required while the investigation continues but will be at his trial.

Berton said that Abdeslam was refusing to talk because of the 24-hours-a-day camera monitoring in his high-security jail, conditions which the lawyers have repeatedly tried and failed to get changed.

Mary said the solitary confinement was causing Abdeslam to clam up.

"The real victims of this are the victims of the Paris attacks. They have a right to know," he said.

The attacks in Paris last November on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France killed 130 people, and was claimed by Daesh. Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels in March and has kept silent since his transfer to France in April.

French authorities suspect Abdeslam, who fled the scene but was captured later, of playing a part in the organisation of the multiple machine gun and suicide bomb attacks.

Abdeslam had been spirited out of France and back to Belgium, his country of residence, by car in the hours after the attacks. He was captured in Belgium and shipped to France earlier this year.