Strongly compatible systems associated to semistable abelian varieties

We prove a motivic refinement of a result of Weil, Deligne and Raynaud on the existence of strongly compatible systems associated to abelian varieties. More precisely, given an abelian variety $A$ over a number field $\mathrm{E}\subset \mathbb C$, we prove that after replacing $\mathbb E$ by a finite extension, the action of $\mathrm{Gal}(\overline{\mathrm E}/\mathrm E)$ on the $\ell$-adic cohomology $\mathrm H^1_{\mathrm{\acute{e}t}}(A_{\overline{\mathrm E}},\mathbb Q_\ell)$ gives rise to a strongly compatible system of $\ell$-adic representations valued in the Mumford--Tate group $\mathbf G$ of $A$. This involves an independence of $\ell$-statement for the Weil--Deligne representation associated to $A$ at places of semistable reduction, extending previous work of ours at places of good reduction.