Paris attack suspect gets jail
BRUSSELS: A Belgian court yesterday found Salah Abdeslam, the last surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, guilty of terrorism-related attempted murder over a shoot-out with police in Brussels days before his capture in 2016.
In its judgement, the court in the Belgian capital said “there can be no doubt” about jihadist Salah Abdeslam and his co-defendant Sofiane Ayari’s involvement in extremism. The court passed a 20-year sentence to the pair.
Prosecutors had previously asked at the trial in February for Abdeslam to be jailed for up to 20 years if found guilty on charges of terrorist-related attempted murder and possession of banned weapons.
Abdeslam — who is being held in jail in France pending a separate trial over the 2015 Paris attacks in which 130 people died — and his co-defendant Sofiane Ayari were not in court for the verdict.
“The court has been told that neither of the two will be present today,” presiding judge Marie-France Keutgen told the Brussels court.
Officials said the judgment was 88 pages long and could take two or three hours to read out.
Belgian police mounted tight security around the imposing Palace of Justice building in Brussels for the verdict.
Abdeslam, 28, a Belgian-born French national, was transported to the court from France for the first day of the trial amid tight security including a helicopter escort, while Tunisian national Ayari, 24, is in jail in Belgium.
On the first day of the trial, Abdeslam proclaimed that he would only put his “trust in Allah” and accused the court of being biased against Muslims.
He then refused to attend the rest of the proceedings.
Four police officers were wounded in the gun battle after police acting on a tip-off over the Paris attacks raided a flat in the Forest area of Brussels on March 15, 2016.
Abdeslam was arrested three days later in the largely immigrant Molenbeek area of the Belgian capital, near the location of his family home.
On March 22, suicide bombers from a cell linked to the Paris attacks killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more at Brussels airport and a metro station in the Belgian capital.
Investigators say Abdeslam’s arrest spurred the Brussels bombers to bring forward the attacks, which had originally been planned for a later date, as they feared they could be captured.
Prosecutors have said that DNA links Abdeslam to the apartment in the Forest district of Brussels where the shooting took place, but not to the weapons that were used.
After Abdeslam refused to return to court for the trial in February, his lawyer Sven Mary sought the case’s dismissal on a technicality over how the judges were named to investigate the gun battle, and said media leaks had denied him a fair trial.
But lawyers for police wounded in the gun battle accused Abdeslam of “mocking” the trial.
The Belgian trial is a prelude to a bigger one that Abdeslam will face in France at a later date over the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015, which were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.