Jury to be chosen for Brussels Jewish museum attack trial
BRUSSELS: A jury will be chosen on Monday for the trial of a Frenchman accused of shooting dead four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014 following his return from Syria.
Mehdi Nemmouche, allegedly the first battle-hardened jihadist to stage a terror attack on European soil, goes on trial Thursday for his killing spree in the Belgian capital on May 24, 2014.
Both Nemmouche, 33, and Nacer Bendrer, a fellow Frenchman aged 30 who allegedly supplied the weapons, claim they are innocent.
The pair will appear at a Brussels criminal court at 9: 00 am ( 0800 GMT) when the process of selecting the 12-member jury begins.
The full trial will open three days later, with the two facing charges of “terrorist murder”, which carries a life sentence.
More than 100 witnesses are to testify at the trial, which will be attended by the victims’ families and Jewish community leaders who have denounced the anti- Semitic nature of the attack.
And more than 300 Belgian and foreign journalists have registered to cover the proceedings which could last until the end of February.
The deadly attack, which lasted only 82 seconds, took place on a Saturday afternoon, in a shooting that shocked Belgium and the world.
Firing a pistol and then an assault rifle, the gunman killed two Israeli tourists, a French volunteer and a Belgian receptionist at the Jewish Museum.
Nemmouche -- born to a family of Algerian origin in the northern French town of Roubaix but immediately put into foster care -- was arrested six days after the attack.
He was caught in the southern French port city of Marseille after arriving on a bus from Brussels. In his possession was a handgun and an assault rifle.
Prior to the attack, Nemmouche is said to have fought in Syria as part of a jihadist faction and is also accused of acting as a jailer of kidnapped French jou rnalists.
Investigators say Nemmouche was in Syria from 2013 to 2014 which was where he met Najim Laachraoui, a member of the gang which went on to carry out the Brussels suicide bombings that killed 32 people in March 2016.
That same Brussels cell is also alleged to have coordinated and sent jihadists to carry out the Paris massacre of November 13, 2015, in which 130 people were killed and hundreds more wounded.
Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State ( IS) group, whose activities in Syria and Iraq lured thousands of jihadists from Europe.
Nemmouche and Bendrer, investigators say, met nearly a decade ago while serving time in a prison in Salon- de-Provence, southern France, where they were both described as “radicalised” inmates who tried to win others over.
Bendrer was arrested in Marseille seven months after the Jewish Museum attack and charged as Nemmouche’s accomplice.
Although he was jailed for five years in September by a French court for attempted extortion, he was transferred to Belgium for the trial.
Nemmouche is expected to face a separate trial in France for holding French journalists hostage in Syria after being charged in November. — AFP