Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
On Friday evening, a Brussels court issued rulings in a file known as the trial of the century in Belgium, and three of the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Brussels in March 2016 were sentenced to life imprisonment. According to the Criminal Court in the Belgian capital, three of the participants in the crime, who were also sentenced to life imprisonment, did not receive the maximum sentence.
The court announced in July that six of the ten suspects in the terrorism trial were fully guilty. The punishment came yesterday, Friday. Two suspects were found partly guilty, and two others were acquitted.
According to Belgian media, the Brussels Criminal Court surprisingly ruled not to punish Salah Abdel Salam for the attacks that occurred in Brussels and Zaventem. None of the eight convicted terrorists will lose their citizenship
The rulings were as follows
Muhammad Abrini: Thirty years in prison + five years on probation
Salah Abdel Salam: No additional penalty (previously sentenced to 20 years in prison)
Ali Al-Haddad Al-Sufi: Twenty years in prison + ten years under supervision
Hervé Bainga Muherwa: ten years in prison and a fine
Osama Karim: Life imprisonment + ten years probation
Bilal Al-Mukhokhi: Life imprisonment + ten years of probation
Osama Attar: Life imprisonment + fourteen years of probation
Sofiane Ayari: No additional punishment (previously sentenced to 20 years in prison)
According to Belgian media, the operation “despite its complexity and procedural difficulties at the beginning, went well and calmly.” This was stated by Federal Minister of Justice Vincent van Quickenborn in a response after the last session, where the ruling was read out.
"The trial is our constitutional state's response to one of the darkest and most horrific pages in our modern history," said Van Quickenborn, who did not comment on the court's substantive ruling.
The suicide bombings at Brussels Airport and the Brussels Metro killed 32 people, excluding three perpetrators. Subsequently, three more people died as a result of these attacks, including a traumatized young woman who was euthanized because depression had made her life unbearable.
Two bombs exploded at the airport on March 22, 2016, nine seconds apart. More than an hour later, a bomb exploded in the Maelbeek metro station. A third bomb did not explode at the airport. This bomb, the heaviest of the three bombs, was left by Muhammad Abrini near the Del France branch. Abrini fled the airport. He was arrested two weeks later.
Syria travelers
The perpetrators were returning Syrian fighters. They belonged to the terrorist organization ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the attacks on the same day. It concerns the cell that was also responsible for the attacks in Paris in November 2015 on a number of restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall.
The fact that three of the six main suspects received less than life imprisonment in Brussels on Friday is partly because they had already been convicted in France for their involvement in the 2015 attacks.
The most important defendant, Osama Attar, was also absent on Friday. Al-Attar was likely killed in a US drone strike in northern Syria in November 2017. Because his death was not proven, he was tried in absentia. He was considered to be the perpetrator of the attacks. The indictment described him as a "leader of a terrorist organization."