Jewish museum terror attack trial opens in Brussels

BRUSSELS: The trial opened yesterday of a ‘ very polite’ Frenchman accused of shooting four people dead at a Jewish museum in Brussels, allegedly the first Syria jihad veteran to stage a terror attack in Europe.

Mehdi Nemmouche, 33, who was in court, faces a life sentence if convicted of the killings in the Belgian capital on May 24, 2014, following his return from Syria’s battlefields.

Both Nemmouche and Nacer Bendrer, a fellow Frenchman aged 30 who allegedly supplied the weapons, were due to hear the 200-page charge sheet against them in the first two days of the trial being held in a Brussels criminal court under heavy security.

Accompanied by two police officers in balaclavas, Nemmouche sat down in the dock wearing an orange sweater. He gave his name at the judge’s request.

Bendrer, who could also be jailed for life if convicted, sat about two metres from him dressed in a black sweater, accompanied by a female police officer whose face was visible.

Both have previously denied charges of ‘ terrorist murder’ for the anti- Semitic 82- second shooting spree. More than 100 witnesses were due to testify at the trial which is being attended by the victims’ families and Jewish community leaders.

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.

Six days after the attack Nemmouche – born to a family of Algerian origin in the northern French town of Roubaix – was arrested in the southern French port city of Marseille, where he arrived on a bus from Brussels.

Investigators say he was carrying a handgun and an assault rifle used in the shooting. They say he fought with a jihadist faction in Syria from 2013 to 2014, where he met Najim Laachraoui, a member of the gang which went on to carry out suicide bombings in Brussels that killed 32 people in March 2016.

Justice minister Koen Geens told RTL broadcaster that the Nemmouche trial is a good test case for the Brussels bombing trial where jurors will have to weigh evidence with the risk ‘of being intimidated.’