If it continues like this, he’s not going to say anything more. Mohammed Abrini complains on Monday, on the first day of the hearing, about the conditions in which he will be transported to court in the coming months. He came to be known as the “man in the hat” through security camera footage. At the last minute he decided not to blow himself up during the terror attacks in Brussels and Zaventem in 2016. “I have been the victim of revenge for seven years,” Abrini says on the first day of the trial.
Before leaving prison, suspects are searched naked. During the transport, they are blindfolded and headphones that play “loud, satanic music,” Abrini said. They are measures to disorient the suspects in case they manage to escape. Abrini calls it humiliating, and says that he was treated with respect at the attack trial in France (where he, like many of the other suspects, was convicted of the attacks in Paris earlier this year).
Another suspect, Osama Krayem, is already refusing to cooperate. The man, who went to the Maalbeek metro station with a backpack full of explosives but eventually fled, does not want to stand up in court, refuses to say his name and sits there all day bored, with his face on his hand.
It must be painful for the victims and relatives. For years they have looked forward to this moment, when they may receive answers to questions that have haunted their minds since they lost loved ones or were injured themselves. The attacks at the airport and at the metro station killed 32 people and injured hundreds. Not everyone will understand that the suspects now think that they are having a hard time: the sentiment that ‘no punishment will be heavy enough’ has already been widely reported in the Belgian media.
“Today it really starts,” said Christelle Giovanotti, who survived the attack on Maalbeek metro station, to the Belga news agency. “A lot of memories come up. Nightmares. Even though we’re in a courthouse here, a sense of injustice prevails.’
Tied up like a sausage
It would be even more painful for the victims if the process is delayed again due to these complaints. Lawyers for other accused also complain about the conditions under which their clients are detained and transported, and threaten to take legal action against Justice and Home Affairs.
For example, according to Jonathan De Tay, lawyer for Ali El Haddad Asufi, his client is “anally searched” daily and tied up “like a sausage” for transport. “Do these people have to take that every day?” he asks in court on Monday. The lawyer announces that he will send a letter of formal notice to the ministers of Justice and the Interior. If they do not respond, De Tay will institute summary proceedings and ask for the trial to be suspended. Delphine Paci, the lawyer of the suspect Salah Abdeslam, also asked the chairman by e-mail to improve the detention conditions.
The trial was previously postponed because of ‘degrading cages’ in the courtroom in which the suspects had to sit. They were nine special boxes made of bulletproof glass. The suspects had to sit in this ‘like animals’, lawyers stated just before the initial start of the trial in September. The president of the court agreed. The courtroom had to be renovated, so the trial could really start two months later than planned, with now one large box in which the suspects and their guards are seated.
The sessions take place in the old NATO headquarters in Brussels, because the courthouse in the Belgian capital was too small for this monstrous process. The building was thoroughly renovated at a cost of millions of euros especially for the sessions. In the old block box, which is surrounded on trial days by heavy fences and armed men with wires in their ears, a total of ten rooms have been set up. Here, civil parties, their relatives and lawyers, the public and the press can follow the process on large screens.
All kinds of excuses
Opposite the glass box in the courtroom are also 34 ordinary Belgian citizens who will lose their lives in the near future, because they have to judge to what extent the suspects are guilty of the deadliest attacks in Belgian history.
They were selected by lottery last week. No less than 1,000 candidate jury members had received a letter with the instruction to report. Hardly anyone was thrilled, it turned out. People tried to get out of it with all kinds of excuses (sick, indispensable at work, already booked a holiday). By mistake, five victims of the attacks were also summoned, and they immediately received an apology.
In the end, seven men and five women were drawn, along with 24 reserve judges just to be on the safe side. During the process, people can finally drop out, for example because they become ill. If there are fewer than 12 jurors left, the entire trial must be redone. On Monday, two reserve members had already resigned for medical reasons.
It takes quite a bit, acknowledged the president of the Brussels court of assizes, Laurence Massart, in a word of thanks to the jury on Monday. In the coming months they must be present ‘every day, every minute of the session’. “This process disrupts your private life, your social life, your family life,” Massart said. “But without you, the process stops.” She advised the jury to grab a pen and paper. ‘This is important. You have now also become judges.’