Brussels attacks: the biggest trial in Belgian history opens this Wednesday

A view of the court which will host the trial of the Brussels attacks from November 30, 2022 at the former NATO headquarters.

AFP - JOHN THYS

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

Ten men are tried in this extraordinary trial.

They are accused of having participated in the 2016 jihadist attacks which left 32 dead and hundreds injured at Brussels airport and in a metro station.

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Four months after Paris, Brussels was in turn hit by the indiscriminate violence of two suicide squads on March 22, 2016. Two men blew themselves up in the departures hall of Zaventem airport, a third in a metro station.

Result: 32 dead and hundreds injured.

According to investigators, the jihadist cell, linked to the Islamic State organization, planned to strike France during the Euro football.

But the arrest of Salah Abdeslam four days earlier forced the terrorists to change their plans, in haste.

Already

for the November 13 attacks, Salah Abdeslam will be in the dock, alongside his childhood friend Mohamed Abrini.

"The man in the hat" spotted on video surveillance images, who would have given up on blowing himself up at the very last moment.

Ten defendants for nine men in the box

A total of nine men are expected in the box.

A tenth, Osama Atar, leader of the cell, will be tried in his absence, because he is presumed dead in Syria.

Six of these ten defendants have already been convicted in the river trial of 

, which was held from September 2021 to June 2022 in Paris.

The trial in Brussels was to start in October, but the initially planned defendant's box - compartmentalized into individual cells - 

by the president of the court Laurence Massart.

It had to be completely rebuilt, which pushed the opening back almost two months.

Facing the accused, now installed in a collective space, the ranks of the victims will be provided.

According to the federal prosecutor's office, more than 1,000 people have already filed civil suits to obtain compensation for damage.

This makes this trial, scheduled until June 2023 at the former NATO headquarters in Brussels, the largest ever organized before an assize court in Belgium.

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• Belgium

• Terrorism

• Justice