Suspects ‘Zaventem’ complain about naked searches and lack of privacy

At just after half past nine on Tuesday morning, Ibrahim Farisi (34) suddenly takes the floor in the highly secured courtroom in Haren, a suburb of Brussels, where the mega trial against the suspects of the attacks in Zaventem and Maalbeek has been held since the beginning of December last year. tacks to incident. Ibrahim Farisi, who is allowed to follow the process in freedom, just like his older brother Smail (38), starts shouting into his microphone.

“The world is big,” he says. “If I wanted to leave this territory, I could have gone to Cuba, or to Brazil.” He wants to make it clear that he is innocent, and that is why he did not run. After some more incoherent texts, Farisi is led outside by the police. He also shouts: “Excuse me!”

Also listen to this podcast: Five years after the attack on Zaventem. On March 22, 2016, Marjan and Edmond Pinczowski lost both their children during the terrorist attack on Zaventem, Brussels airport. They told their story to NRC editor Jannetje Koelewijn. Alexander and Sascha were their children’s names. They were 29 and 26 years old.

It is not the first time that the Farisis have caused a stir. In mid-January, Smail Farisi had to be kicked out of court after saying he couldn’t possibly be a terrorist because he said he was “homosexual”. “I’m going to drop dead here,” he said. Earlier he had stated under the influence of alcohol that he needs “two pints” in the morning to appear in court.

Ibrahim Farisi also regularly made an intoxicated impression. It seems that the brothers want to convince the 36 jurors that they are not devout Muslims, and therefore not terrorists. Ibrahim and Smail Farisi face five to ten years and life imprisonment respectively for ‘participation in the activities of a terrorist group’ and ‘murder and attempted murder in a terrorist context’.

Lifetime

The stakes are high for them; they have their freedom to win or lose. That hardly applies, if at all, to the seven men behind glass. Three of them received life sentences in Paris. Salah Abdeslam will certainly never be released from them. All that remains for them is to try to improve the conditions of their detention. And they have not left any opportunity unturned in recent weeks to do so.

This started in September, when the largest trial in Belgian history was postponed for weeks because the suspects successfully challenged that they had to be separated from each other in glass boxes “like animals”. They would hardly be able to communicate with each other and with their lawyers that way, and certainly not discreetly. They were thus deprived of their right to a fair trial. It took weeks and tens of thousands of euros to equip the courtroom with a new, large box.

Victims and relatives of the attacks, in which 33 people died and hundreds more were injured, were once again put to the test. Many of them yearned for the beginning of the process. To purification, and answers.

When the trial finally started, on December 5, one juror after another dropped out in the first few days: four due to illness – a virus was circulating in the Justitia building – and one due to insufficient command of French, the official language of the process. This was not sufficiently taken into account during the selection beforehand.

The following days were spent reading out the names of civil parties – well over a thousand by now – and it took another three days to read the bill of indictment, nearly five hundred pages long. In an assize case, everything is oral: a relic from the time when not all jurors could read and write.

Searches up to the anus

Almost immediately it became clear what the three main suspects Osama Krayem, Mohamed Abrini and Salah Abdeslam wanted to achieve. They complained from the start about “humiliating naked body searches” that they said they had to endure daily before the ride from their cell to court. Those searches go far; the anus is examined to see if objects are hidden there. According to OCAD, the Belgian body that makes threat analyzes among detainees, these are necessary because of the great risk of flight. And that is not for nothing. From tapped conversations, the police would have concluded in early December that Abrini told a co-defendant in Arabic that he wanted to “cause trouble with a knife” and that Abdeslam wanted to “create a commotion” during the hearing.

In summary proceedings brought by lawyers for the suspects, a judge ruled just before the turn of the year that nude searches could only take place “in exceptional cases and not systematically”, on pain of a penalty of up to 50,000 euros for the Belgian state. But because searches still seem to be continuing in January, six of the seven detained suspects return directly to their cells in protest at the start of almost every trial day. Abdeslam is also said to have recently been beaten by a police officer. He announced last week that he would remain in his cell until the verdict, which is not expected for six months.

With this, the little hope of finding the truth that some victims still cherished has also evaporated. It could get even worse for them: Abdeslam’s lawyer says he may see grounds for cassation due to the ongoing searches. If they are upheld, the whole process would have to go over.

Mutilated bodies

For the time being, the process continues and we have finally arrived at the substantive treatment. In recent weeks, agents and aid workers have reported, sometimes in tears, in the most poignant detail of what they found on March 22, 2016, in the rubble of Zaventem airport and Maalbeek metro station. Pictures of mutilated bodies passed, recordings of people screaming, images of materials used to manufacture deadly bombs. For example, new information about the attacks is now released almost daily.

Since then, no juror has been dropped. The twelve effective and nineteen reserve members are dragged deeper into the file with each trial day. It is known that an assize court shows increasing involvement as a case progresses. You saw that last week in the questions they asked the witnesses: every stone is turned over in this investigation.

In the coming weeks, the role of all suspects will be explained in more detail by the investigating judges, witnesses and lawyers.