They had happy childhoods in Brussels, Malmö or Tunisia, with many siblings and parents who worked hard to provide them with a comfortable life.
At the marathon trial for the attacks in Paris in recent weeks, it was possible to hear how the once ordinary lives of the 14 people in the dock became a mixture of petty business and crime.
Some joined the war in Syria and then became embroiled in the Islamic State plot to wreak havoc with terrorist attacks in Europe.
Everything culminated in the murder of 130 people on the night of November 13, 2015.
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This is the moment when, at important trials in France, prosecutors and lawyers get the opportunity to peek into the private, work and - and criminal - lives of the accused.
The presiding judge excluded questions about the specific points of the indictment or their religious beliefs until January.
After several weeks of painful eyewitness testimony, for the first time since the trial began in September, attention has shifted to the defendants, and their voices are helping to build a picture of the world they came from.
A key place in that world is occupied by the Molenbeek neighborhood in Brussels, and especially the café there Les Béguines, held by Brahim Abdeslam.
Brahim Abdeslam was one of the shooters from the cafe terrace in November 2015.
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He was the brother of Salah Abdsalam, the alleged "tenth" man in the Paris attacks and the most famous of the defendants.
Speaking last Tuesday about his childhood, Salah Abdeslam, 32, seemed a stark contrast to the aggressively unflappable stance he had taken so far at the trial.
He even caused a few laughs in the courtroom.
Born in Brussels to Moroccan parents, with French citizenship, he described himself as a "calm - decent guy".
“I was popular with the teachers… I was good at some subjects. I studied hard. I did my best. I was ambitious."
He earned a degree in electromechanics and went to work, like his father, in the Brussels tramway factory. But after a year and a half he was fired.
"Why did you get fired," the presiding judge asked him.
"Because I was in prison."
In late 2010, Salah Abdeslam participated in a botched robbery along with friend Abdelhamid Abaoud - the same Abaoud who would become the ringleader of the Paris attacks.
"I was born and raised in Belgium. I went to public school. I lived the way I was taught to live in the West. Like everyone else, I wanted to get married and have children," he said in court.
"But I put all that aside the moment I decided to devote myself to another project."
What other project, the judge asked him.
"The things I'm accused of now."
Another regular guest of the cafe Les Béguines Muhamed Abrini (36) was in Molanbek.
He is accused of transporting the Parisian jihadists from Brussels on the night of the attack.
He is also believed to have been the "man with the hat" who failed to blow himself up in the deadly attack on Brussels airport in March 2016.
One of the seven children of a construction worker from Morocco who "had a good salary - we were neither rich nor poor", he received his first court verdict (out of six) at the age of 17 for stealing a car.
A series of various jobs followed, but he was also a compulsive gambler.
He planned to get married, but when his younger brother was killed in Syria, he vowed to go there too.
"Didn't you want to repay your parents for their love and support?" asked the judge.
"Of course they were disappointed. I wish my father would have been proud of me. Our parents did everything they could for us to succeed in life. I was spoiled by the environment."
"And yet your brother, who grew up in the same place - made it in life."
"If you add up all those who failed and those who succeeded, the ratio is about 80-20. I'm one of those who didn't make it."
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Hamza Atou (27) was also dating Les Béguines.
The youngest of six children born to a Belgian-Moroccan family, he said he had a good childhood but developed an addiction to cannabis after leaving school.
In order to be able to finance it, he began to distribute drugs.
"That's how I lived. I was selling cannabis resin. I know it's a crime. I'm not proud of it. But I couldn't imagine myself robbing other people."
He is accused of driving from Brussels to pick up Salah Abdeslam late at night on the night of the attack.
As one of the three defendants not in custody during the trial, it was nevertheless found that he occasionally violated the terms of his parole, mostly staying out late at night.
“Don't you know you can go to jail for that?” the judge asked.
"Often in life I do something without thinking. That's how I ended up where I am," he said.
Another Belgian of Moroccan origin, Muhammad Bakali (34), grew up as one of six children "in a nice house with a garden".
"We were a united family. I played football in the local club and regularly went to the municipal library. I read a lot."
After finishing school, he worked with his father in the garage.
"That's when I started learning Arabic, so I could talk to the customers."
At home they spoke Berber.
But then he started selling counterfeit goods:
"Clothes, sneakers, watches, perfume - I sold everything."
Bakali is accused of providing logistical support to the attackers.
He is serving a prison sentence for a similar role in the so-called attacks on Talis in August 2015.
In prison, where, like other defendants, he stays in isolation, he started studying sociology.
"At first I wanted to study ethnology, to learn more about the Berber people and my origins," he said. "But then I discovered sociology. It helped me understand the complexity of things. I'm learning about what I don't have anymore - social relations."
Although most of the defendants have Belgian or French citizenship, four of them grew up in Sweden, Tunisia, Algeria and Pakistan.
They went to Syria to join the extremists of the Islamic State and then in 2015 crossed over to Europe.
Osama Krajem (29) was born in Malmö, the son of a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother.
At the age of 12, he appeared playing football in a Swedish television documentary about the success of the immigrant experience.
"So you were presented as an example of integration?" asked the judge.
"Probably."
"Did you feel like you were successfully integrated at that point?"
No, he replied:
"I lived in an area where there were no Swedes."
Pakistani Muhammad Usman lost his farmer father at a very young age.
He remembers that as a boy he loved cricket, but he could not say how many years he spent working in the fields and how many years he spent studying in a madrasah.
"I don't know how old I was when I stopped my studies. Birthdays are not celebrated in my people."
Which is a problem, because no one can determine how old he is today.
The fake documents he was carrying when he was arrested in Greece say he was born in 1981, but the identity card sent by the Pakistani police says he was born in 1993.
The judge said that she looks much older than she is only 28 years old.
“I know I don't look that old. It's because I was in isolation," he said.
The defendant's religious motivation is not considered, nor are the steps they took to get where they are.
All that must wait for a new chapter of the trial.
Watch the video about the extremist attacks in Vienna in November 2020.
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