2015 Paris attacks: Trial of accomplices to begin

BRUSSELS: Fourteen people charged as accomplices to jihadists who carried out deadly bomb and gun attacks in Paris in 2015 will go on trial in Belgium from Tuesday.

Proceedings will take place under high security in Nato’s former headquarters and are expected to last until May 20, with a verdict likely to take several more weeks.

They are happening in parallel with a trial in Paris of 20 suspects charged in France, which opened in September and is expected to run until the end of June.

The November 2015 Paris attacks saw 130 people killed, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility.

Assailants set off suicide belts outside the Stade de France stadium, as a group of gunmen in a car cut down people outside restaurants and bars.

Three jihadists then killed 90 people attending a performance at the popular Bataclan music venue.

Part of the attack was planned in Belgium, according to prosecutors.

The 14 accused in the Belgian trial - 13 men and one woman are suspected of transporting, housing or financially helping some of the perpetrators of the attacks.

Charges include driving an alleged attacker to the airport for a trip to Syria.

Some of the suspects are close to Salah Abdeslam, a 32-year-old French national who is the only surviving suspected assailant after failing to set off his bomb belt. Abdeslam is on trial in Paris.

Prosecutors allege they had knowledge of the jihadist group’s intentions, or helped Abdeslam - who was living in the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek - go to ground in the four months following the attacks that he was a fugitive.

One of the suspects is Abid Aberkane, Abdeslam’s cousin who lived nearby him in Molenbeek.

He is charged with hiding Abdeslam at his mother’s house in the days before his March 2016 arrest.

Others are friends of the attacks’ mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, or of two brothers who were suicide bombers during later attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016 that killed 32 people.