Brussels terrorist attack trial opens, reviving heartache
2016 bombings killed 32, with 340 others hurt
BRUSSELS — The mammoth trial against 10 men accused of involvement in the March 2016 terrorist attacks in Brussels began Monday, almost seven years after the bombings that killed 32, wounded hundreds more, and shook multicultural, multiethnic Belgian society to the core.
The bombings at the Brussels Airport and at a subway station in the center of the city took place four months after a string of terrorist attacks in Paris. Both sets of assaults were claimed by the same cell of the Islamic State group, with many of its members linked to the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek.
The attacks in France and Belgium were the deadliest operations organized by the Islamic State on European soil, leaving deep wounds and several unanswered questions. The sheer randomness of the violence instilled anxiety across Europe and stoked debate about multiculturalism, immigration, and the place of Islam in largely secular European nations.
As the trial got underway Monday, the president of the court — a judge who presides over the hearing — identified all of the participants, including the defendants and the nearly 1,000 victims, witnesses, and experts registered as civil parties.
One defendant refused to identify himself, and another decried what he called the “humiliating” conditions of his detention. The hearings will resume Tuesday, starting with reading of the indictment, which is more than 400 pages long.
Like the proceedings to bring justice in the Paris attacks, which concluded this year, the trial in Belgium will be the largest ever organized in the country, with more than 1,000 registered survivors, witnesses, and experts. The hearings are expected to last up to eight months, taking place four days a week under tight security.
Authorities have granted free travel to victims living in Belgium to attend the proceedings, which are being held in a Ministry of Defense building that once was NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. Those living abroad can follow the hearings via Internet radio.
Although the trial brings the promise of reckoning, the testimonies from the hundreds of victims, witnesses, and experts, as well as from the defendants, will probably revive painful memories and could deepen the rifts exposed by the bombings.
Three homemade bombs packed with nails exploded in Brussels on March 22, 2016, killing 32 people from at least eight countries and wounding 340 others.
Two bombs were detonated in the departure hall of Brussels Airport around 8 a.m.; a third bomb was later found unexploded in the same area. Shortly after 9 a.m., another bomb went off in the Brussels subway station of Maelbeek. The three suicide bombers, later identified as Najim Laachraoui, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, and Khalid elBakraoui, died on the spot.
The scale and randomness of the violence sent shock waves across Belgium and the world. The Islamic State bombings paralyzed the city of Brussels — the headquarters of NATO and the European Union — and prompted travel warnings and increased terrorism threat levels in cities across the globe.
Belgium declared a mourning period, and embarked on an arduous process of soul searching. After the attacks, the Belgian security services were heavily criticized for their lack of effective action against Islamist extremists, many of them homebred. There were also questions about what many described as a failed effort to help the Muslim community integrate into Belgian society.
Unlike in Paris, the fate of those tried in Brussels will not be determined by a panel of judges, but by a jury composed of Brussels residents. Last week, the court selected 12 jurors and 24 potential replacements, drawn from a list of more than 700 who were summoned.