A marathon trial of November 2015 Paris attack suspects resumed Thursday after uncertainty over the appearance of the main suspect was lifted by a negative test result for the virus.
Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the 10 assailants, tested postive at the end of December, was declared fit to return to the courtroom after not appearing since November 25.
He is set to take the stand for questioning next Thursday and Friday, an event long awaited by families of the 130 people killed on the night of November 13, 2015.
In the meantime, there was a tense standoff between the presiding judge and another defendant.
Osama Krayem, a 29-year-old Swedish national, had informed the court through his lawyer that he would remain silent "until the end of proceedings", and also refuse to even attend the trial, calling it "an illusion".
But when it was his turn on Thursday to be questioned about his role in the series of jihadist attacks on bars, restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and the national stadium, chief judge Jean-Louis Peries said that he would be made to show up.
"I will have no option but to use force to make him appear on the stand," he said.
But that turned out to be unnecessary, as Krayem made his way to the bench uncoerced, and sat down next to Abdeslam.
"It's good of you to come willingly," the judge commented.
Abdeslam, a dual French-Moroccan national, was captured in Brussels after discarding his suicide vest and fleeing the French capital in the chaotic aftermath of the bloodshed.
The attack on the Bataclan, where 90 people mostly in their 20s and 30s were massacred as they watched a rock concert, represented the most traumatic of a string of separate attacks claimed by Islamic State over the course of several years.
Abdeslam's co-defendants are answering charges ranging from providing logistical support to planning the attacks, as well as supplying weapons.
Krayem, whom Belgian investigators identified as one of the killers of a Jordanian pilot burnt alive in a cage by IS in early 2015 in Syria, is also under investigation in Sweden for war crimes.
After four months of proceedings, the trial has now entered a new phase in which the 14 suspects present are to be questioned. Six others are being tried in absentia, although five of them are believed to be dead, mostly in airstrikes in Syria.
The horror was unleashed when the first attackers detonated suicide belts outside the Stade de France stadium where France played a football match against Germany.
A group of gunmen later opened fire from a car on half a dozen restaurants and Abdeslam's brother Brahim blew himself up in a bar.
The trial, the biggest in modern French history, is to last until May.
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