Brussels: Europe and the Arabs

Today, Monday morning, the trial sessions in the file of the Brussels bombings that took place in March 2016, which claimed the lives of 32 people and injured more than 300 others, took place at the airport in the Belgian capital and one of the internal train stations. The resumption of the sessions came today after the Christmas holidays. At the beginning of the session, the issue of searching the defendants after taking off their clothes and sometimes forcing them to kneel on their feet was raised, a topic that aroused the anger of the accusers and their defense team, which he said contradicts European laws. The defendants attended the hearings in the old NATO headquarters in Brussels, but only Salah Abdel Salam "One of the main accused" remains in prison. He is also the most vocal in opposing naked inspections. But according to the presiding judge, this is not the problem this time. He is ill and has a medical certificate justifying his absence. The veto is being prepared The defendants' lawyers officially said that their clients also had to undergo a strip search today. Abdeslam's defense lawyer, Delphine Bassi, explained that she believes it is a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights to force the defendants to undergo a strip search before coming to trial. Especially because, according to her, nude searches are illegally enforced. Moreover, both Accused Asoufi and Ayari say the police told them they would be forced to kneel if necessary. According to the defense lawyer, such a thing is prohibited. Lorquin: "The client has a blank criminal record." Vincent Lorquin, attorney for the accused Hervey Baingana Muherwa, questioned the validity of the individual justifications for the security measures for the prisoner transfer. According to the lawyer, Baingana Muherwa was strip-searched again that morning, and had to bend his knees. The defense has announced that it will send a report to the prison tomorrow morning to formally determine how things are going there. Half of the defendants were in the session, but they left it later. They are Hebrew, Karim, and Asoufi, who said they would rather go to their cell. They were turned away. Ibrahim Farsi said that he was ill and left the hall and then returned again. After more than half an hour of discussions about the naked inspections, the hearings began and the focus of the day was on what happened at the indoor train station in Malbec. The expert from the Dovo demining service who was sent to the Malbec metro station described the terrible situation they faced there. “For me it was a descent into hell rather than a war zone... In Afghanistan, we knew what we would find in a bombing scene. But here. We had no idea what we would find in such an enclosed space.” According to Dufu's expert, the second subway car was located ten meters away from the explosion site. "At first we were confused. We didn't receive the video until a week later." When Khaled El Bakraoui detonated his bomb, the subway had just left. This caused the metro to stop just ten meters away. Damage was visible on the wall at the site of the explosion, but the epicenter was about 15 meters away. In recent days, criticism has appeared on social media of the lawyers who defend the defendants in the file of the terrorist attack, in the trial that began in the fourth quarter of last year. Tried in the case of terrorism. According to what was published in the "Neurblad" newspaper, the union said in defense of the lawyers: "They are only doing their job." And the union added, “We defend the people who committed acts, not the acts themselves.” "We are not unscrupulous," the criminal lawyers said. It comes after the Belgian Ministry of Justice announced that it would appeal against a procedural judge's decision to ban systematic naked searches of suspects in the Brussels attacks trial. According to the statements of the spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Justice, Sharon Bevis. The defendants' lawyers have complained since the beginning of the trial about the strip searches that take place when their clients are transferred from the prison to the trial building. A Brussels procedural judge then banned the systematic daily searches at the end of December because they violated the European Convention on Human Rights. The Justice Department later indicated that it respected the decision, but would consider whether to appeal against that decision. The police still considered it appropriate for all seven defendants to impose strict security measures, including strip searches. For example, one of the defendants, Mohamed Abrini, previously said that he would try to smuggle a knife. Another accused, Salah Abdel Salam, showed sharp and angry behavior against a police officer, and precautionary measures must be taken to avoid any negative results. .