2023-09-15 19:59:01
The Assize Court referred to a previous Belgian conviction handed down in 2018 against Salah Abdeslam and did not want to impose an additional sentence.
Seven years after the attacks in Brussels in March 2016, and after nine months of trial, Mohamed Abrini, “the man in the hat” who accompanied the two jihadists who died in suicide bombings at Brussels-Zaventem airport, was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison for his participation in these attacks.
Concerning Salah Abdeslam, one of his co-defendants, the Assize Court referred to a previous Belgian conviction handed down in 2018 (20 years for a shooting with police officers in March 2016) and did not want to impose an additional sentence.
The French jihadist, however, remains considered by Belgian justice as one of the co-perpetrators of the Brussels attacks. The only surviving member of the commandos who attacked Paris on November 13, 2015, Salah Abdeslam was sentenced in June 2022 in France to irreducible life imprisonment for his participation in these attacks, which left 35 dead.
The federal prosecutor’s office had requested a new life prison sentence against Abdeslam, but the court accepted the arguments of the Frenchman’s defense who had pleaded not to accumulate several heavy sentences.
Osama Atar sentenced by default
The court ruled that Abdeslam’s participation in the preparation of the attacks was part of an offense related to the shooting that occurred on rue du Dries in Brussels on March 15, 2016, when he fled a police search in one of the hideouts of the jihadist cell. This is the “continuous manifestation of the same criminal intention”, justified the judges in their motivations.
Found guilty of “assassinations in a terrorist context” at the end of July, Osama Krayem, Bilal El Makhoukhi and Oussama Atar were all three sentenced to life imprisonment. The latter, emir of the Islamic State group who led the jihadist cell, was tried in absentia because he is presumed to have died in Syria in 2017. Life imprisonment was also requested by the prosecution in the case of Belgian-Moroccan Ali El Haddad Asufi, who was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Tunisian Sofien Ayari, already convicted like Abdeslam for the shooting in Rue du Dries, benefited from the same legal reasoning as the latter: no additional sentence. Finally Hervé Bayingana Muhirwa, guilty of “participation in the activities of a terrorist group, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
No forfeiture of Belgian nationality was pronounced as the prosecution had desired for five men, including Mohamed Abrini.
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