A silent film chilling in a silence of death: from the box of the accused, Mehdi Nemmouche does not leave the screen of the eyes. These are the video surveillance images of the four murders he is accused of committed in 2014 at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. It shows a man murdering shot after shot, a bullet revolver in the head, a couple of Israeli tourists, the Riva, in the lobby. Then rush to the reception and coldly run a young employee and a volunteer - this one to the Kalashnikov - before fleeing. Expeditive and brutal. Probably shorter than the 82 seconds originally mentioned in the indictment.
In the room, the mother of Alexander Strens, the murdered employee, observes in tears the terrible images of his son, dressed to the nines that day, who wounded, wounded, on the floor of the museum. He will die two weeks later. "I live like a mother who has been cut off," said 68-year-old Annie Adam, who was Mehdi Nemmouche's first confrontation with the victims' relatives since the opening of her trial. sitting in Brussels on Monday.
"Targeted execution of Mossad agents". Claiming to be innocent, the defendant, a radicalized multi-criminal offender in prison then passed through Syria, refuses to speak. After hearing the charge detail two days during the evidence against him, the one who was arrested six days after the facts in possession of the weapons used for the killings, let his lawyers speak. Their defense: he "is not the killer", but was "trapped". And according to them the killing of May 24, 2014 is not an attack of the Islamic State group, but "a targeted execution of agents of the Mossad", the Israeli secret services. "There is no conspiracy," said Friday Nemmouche's lawyer, Me Sebastien Courtoy, accused of conducting a conspiracy defense strategy. He claimed that he would provide evidence that the Israeli killed at the museum was "vice-consul in Berlin" and not mere Mossad accountant.
The political activities of one of the victims in question. It is also question of Shiism when mentioning the family of Alexander Strens, whose father, a native of Morocco, was according to the lawyer "stuck for seditious activities at the embassy of Iran". Regarding the attack, there is, he continues, "a track evoked by the State Security, which leads to Iran and Hezbollah". A note from the same Belgian service "in the file ensures, after investigation, that the attack has nothing to do with (the) possible political activities" of the father, had anticipated Me Dalne before the hearing to prevent any exploitation conspiracy. Born into a family of eight children, Alexandre Strens (born Reydouane Latrach, according to the daily newspaper Le Soir ) had changed his name, like all his family, after the adoption of his father in 1992 by a Belgian castellan explained Annie Adam Friday. He whose parents divorced in 2003 had not seen his father for years.
At the end of the hearing, the director of the museum, Philippe Blondin, castigated the "lack of sensitivity" and the "absolutely insupportable malice" of the accused's lawyers. The trial, in which Mehdi Nemmouche, 33, is being tried with a co-accused, Nacer Bendrer, suspected of having provided him with weapons, is expected to last until March 1st. Next week will be devoted entirely to hearing investigators and experts.