Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini, already sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022 in Paris for the attacks of November 13, 2015, were found guilty of“assassinations in a terrorist context” Tuesday, July 25 in Brussels at the trial on the jihadist attacks that took place in 2016 in the Belgian capital.
This is the most serious offense retained before the Brussels Assize Court to judge these suicide attacks which targeted the airport and the Brussels metro on March 22, 2016, where 32 people died and more than 300 were injured. Both face a life sentence. Unlike Mohamed Abrini, Salah Abdeslam, in prison on the day of the attacks, disputed his participation in the facts.
People’s Jury
In this extraordinary trial opened in December 2022 in the Belgian capital, ten defendants were tried for their alleged participation in terrorist activities. Among these ten defendants, six had already been convicted in France in June 2022 for their role in the attacks of November 13 in Paris and at the Stade de France.
In Brussels, nine men in total appeared, including MM. Abdeslam and Abrini, while a tenth, Osama Atar, alleged sponsor of the attacks – also of those in Paris – was tried in absentia, because presumed dead in Syria.
Salah Abdeslam, who had managed to return to Belgium after the attacks in the Paris region, and his accomplices were tried in Brussels by a popular jury, and not a special assize court composed of professional magistrates, unlike the Paris trial.
Second sentences
The federal prosecutor’s office had wanted eight of the ten defendants, considered to be the “co-authors” of the facts, in its indictment in the spring. It was followed by the popular jury in only six cases.
Thus the Tunisian Sofien Ayari, accomplice in Abdeslam’s end of the run, arrested like him on March 18, and the Rwandan Hervé Bayingana Muhirwa, accused of having hosted Mohamed Abrini among others in Brussels, escaped conviction for the most serious offence. The two men are, however, found guilty of participating in the activities of a terrorist group. The last two defendants, the Smail brothers and Ibrahim Farisi, who appeared free, were acquitted.
As required by Belgian law, the sentences for the accused convicted will only be pronounced in a second phase, after a new phase of requisitions and defense pleadings. This stage will only take place at the beginning of September, after the judicial holidays.
Some of the thousands of people who had joined as civil parties spoke during the trial, as well as some 370 experts and witnesses. In addition to the 32 dead, the indictment listed some 700 injured and traumatized people.