The Belgian ‘trial of the century’ has finally been completed after nine months. More than seven years after the terrorist attacks on Zaventem airport and the Brussels Maalbeek metro station, which left 35 people dead, the eight remaining suspects heard their sentences on Friday evening in a former NATO building just outside Brussels.
Twelve jurors from the court of assizes, a people’s jury, have struggled through many hours of the most shocking evidence in recent months. Before the summer holidays, they debated more than three hundred questions of guilt in isolation for eighteen days. It then became clear that eight out of ten suspects were found guilty or partly guilty. The jury was then given five weeks off to determine a sentence in consultation with professional judges since the beginning of this week and to make a final judgment on the attacks that shook Belgium to the foundations on March 22, 2016.
The Assize Court imposed sentences ranging from life in prison for (attempted) terrorist murder to ten years in prison for proven participation in a terrorist organization. Salah Abdeslam, who over the years has become the face of the attacks in Paris and Brussels, was not given an additional sentence because he had already been sentenced to life imprisonment in France last year, without the possibility of early release. He had previously been sentenced to twenty years in prison in Belgium for a shooting, when his hiding place was discovered by the police. The court found another life sentence, a sentence that prosecutors had requested, to be disproportionate. Abdeslam said he was “relieved” and responded “emotionally” to the verdict. A request to serve his sentence in France was rejected last week.
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Mohamed Abrini, the man who at the last minute refused to detonate a bomb at Zaventem and fled, was given a thirty-year prison sentence plus five years in the government’s custody, after having already been sentenced to life in prison in Paris. Osama Krayem, the Swedish jihadist, was sentenced to life in prison. In France he also has to serve thirty years in prison.
Twist in the law
The Tunisian Sofien Ayari, like Abdeslam, received no additional punishment. His sentence was a sensitive point during the trial. He could receive a maximum of ten years in prison for his membership of a terrorist organization, but he had already been sentenced to twenty years for the aforementioned shooting. Due to a now amended twist in Belgian law, the assize sentence would nullify the previous sentence before a criminal court, and as a result he could still be released earlier, but this has been prevented with this ruling.
Ali El Haddad Asufi was sentenced to twenty years in prison and loses his political and civil rights in Belgium. At the time of the attacks, he worked at an airport catering company and was convicted of the terrorist murder of 35 people. Bilal El Makhoukhi, whose DNA was found in several terrorist safehouses, has been sentenced to life in prison. Oussama Atar, the mastermind behind the attacks, was also sentenced in absentia. He was killed in an airstrike in Syria in 2017.
Rwandan Hervé Bayingana Muhirwa, who brought terrorists to safe houses and let them stay in his apartment, was sentenced to ten years in prison. He is the only one of the convicts to be released soon, as he has been in prison for more than seven years. The Farisi brothers were acquitted. They rented an apartment to the attackers, but it has not been established that they were aware of their plans. None of the terrorists were deprived of Belgian nationality, because they have their social ties in Belgium.
Longest assize case in Belgium
This judgment brings a provisional end to the longest assize case ever in Belgium. The convicted persons can still appeal in cassation, where a special court will check whether the law has been properly applied and whether no procedural errors have been made, but that chance seems small with this extremely carefully arrived at ruling.
However serene the process ultimately was, the start was downright chaotic. It was supposed to start in September last year, but was delayed for weeks when the glass boxes in which the suspects followed the trial had to be renovated so that they could consult with their lawyers. The trial was then called off because seven suspects complained that they had to undergo “humiliating naked searches” when being moved from prison to court. The summary proceedings judge then ordered them to stop on a systematic scale.
The substantive hearing of the case could begin at the beginning of January. Just reading out the indictment took days, because everything in an assize procedure is done orally. Logistically, there were a lot of things to negotiate about the lawsuit. The process was handled in French. Relatives and victims who came to the courtroom could not always follow what was said in detail because of the sometimes difficult to understand interpreters.
It was feared in advance that the trial would end in a fiasco due to its complexity and long duration, but the people’s jury took its task seriously and carried it out with great dedication, Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne also said in a response.
Change in law
To ensure the continuity of an assize case, twelve reserve jury members are always appointed in Belgium in addition to the standard panel of twelve people. This is to accommodate illnesses and failures for other reasons. A change in the law was introduced specifically for this trial that made it possible to appoint 24 jurors. This precaution ultimately turned out not to be necessary.
Many leading lawyers were skeptical. They thought that procedural errors could not be prevented in such a complicated case and saw this process as the bankruptcy of the assize court. It was also felt that the high costs of the trial, which amounted to many millions, could have been better spent in the Brussels police system. But for court journalist Gust Verwerft, who reported on thousands of assize cases, the trial has actually become a triumph for jury trials. “The jury made a good distinction between the different suspects. It has become a very balanced statement. All evidence has been heard in public. As a result, the Belgian people have also received purification.”
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Mathilde Reumaux (35) agrees. When a bomb exploded at Maalbeek metro station, she was lucky to be in a different carriage. She suffered nothing from the attacks, but was “very curious” about the trial and came to court several times to be able to look the perpetrators in the eye. “I wanted justice to be done,” she says on the phone. “And I think it has happened. The jury took their time to judge based on all the evidence they saw. These are incredibly dedicated people.”
Mental consequences
Katrijn Janssens (47) experienced the process as painful. On March 22, she was at Zaventem airport with her husband on their way to the US when two suicide bombers blew themselves up and took the lives of twelve people. Hundreds more were injured. Nothing happened to Janssens and her husband, but they are still struggling with the mental consequences of the attacks. “I thought this process would be a milestone in my recovery,” she says. “But it has made me deteriorate. Two men have been acquitted and one will be released in the foreseeable future. That makes me feel unsafe.”
Victim collective Life4Brussels, which unites six hundred victims, came on Friday evening with printed sweaters with the text ‘Victims are classified wasteto the courtroom. Spokesperson Jamila Adda was angry about the fact that many victims have still not been recognized as such by Belgium seven years after the attacks. Hundreds of them are involved in a battle with insurers that appears to last longer than the criminal case. “The Belgian state has failed them,” Adda said. “Their wounds are deep and will not be healed by life sentences.”