In the trial surrounding the 2016 Islamist attacks in Brussels, which left dozens dead and several hundred injured, several men were sentenced to long prison terms. The announcement was made yesterday by a jury in the Belgian capital, according to the Belgian news agency.
Portal/John Thys
The men had already been found guilty in July of, among other things, terrorist murder and attempted terrorist murder, and it was now a matter of determining the exact sentence.
According to the information, prison sentences ranged from ten years to life imprisonment. Salah Abdeslam, the main perpetrator of the 2015 Paris attacks, who was also charged in Brussels, did not receive any additional prison sentence because he had already been sentenced to 20 years in prison for another crime in Belgium.
Portal/Yorick Jansens
The terrorist attacks at the Belgian capital’s airport and a metro station on March 22, 2016 left 35 dead and 340 injured.
Unlike the July guilt and innocence decision, the twelve jurors did not decide alone, but together with the court. Since Monday, the jury, as well as the court president and her two associate judges, have been housed in an unknown location for deliberations and isolated from the outside world.
A total of ten men were charged in the Brussels attacks. However, one person disappeared from court in July: he is presumed to have already died in Syria.
Before the attacks in Brussels, extremists killed 130 people and injured another 350 in a series of attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015. The attacks in Paris and Brussels were likely orchestrated by the same terrorist cell, which is why six of those convicted in Paris were tried in Brussels – including the main defendant in the Paris trial, Abdeslam.
Public interest in the trial with more than 900 co-authors was enormous – which is why the trial was held in converted rooms at the former NATO headquarters in the northeast of the city.