The men were found guilty in July and the exact sentence has now been revealed.
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 by a jury on Friday in the Belgian capital, according to the Belga news agency. 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. A 30-year prison sentence was imposed on 38-year-old Belgian Mohamed Abrini. Salah Abdeslam, the main perpetrator of the 2015 Paris attacks, who was also charged in Brussels, did not receive an additional prison sentence as he had already been sentenced to 20 years in prison for another crime in Belgium. Capital and in a metro station, on March 22, 2016, 35 people died and 340 were injured.
10 men in court
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.
Series of attacks in Paris
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 also tried in Brussels – including the main defendant in the Paris trial, Salah 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. (APA)