The first hearing of 2023 of the trial of the attacks in Brussels of March 22, 2016 was suspended Tuesday around 1:00 p.m. after the defendants protested, via their lawyers, to have undergone strip searches accompanied by genuflection, despite the order in summary judgment pronounced on December 29 which prohibited the systematic use of this type of search.
At the request of the defence, the hearing began at around 9:20 a.m. with the reading of this order by the president of the court. Only four defendants detained out of seven were present in the box, Salah Abdeslam, Bilal El Makhoukhi and Ali El Haddad Asufi being absent. The debates ignited after the reading when the lawyers of the three absentees explained that, if their clients wanted to appear in court, they had given up coming after being forced to submit to a strip search. Counsel for the accused detainees present specified that their clients had also had to comply. “We are facing a Minister of Justice who does not respect a court decision”, commented Me Lurquin, lawyer for Hervé Bayingana Muhirwa. Mohamed Abrini’s lawyer, Me Laura Pinilla, announced that it was likely that she no longer had a mandate to represent her client at trial. Also, Me Jonathan De Taye, counsel for Ali El Haddad Asufi, affirmed that he would not agree to represent his client, absent at the hearing on Tuesday morning, if the decision of the interim judge was not respected. However, if an accused is neither present nor represented, the trial cannot continue.
For their part, the civil parties and the Attorney General wanted the trial to continue. “The rights of each other must be respected”asked Alexandre Wilmotte, who represents three civil parties. “Of course, the rights of the accused must be respected, but everyone will understand that the victims wish to move forward. If certain accused are not represented, the court can take measures so that the trial takes place despite everything”.
Sofien Ayari wanted to speak as well. “It’s not a whim, we can’t go through this for 9 months. If this continues, it will be impossible to appear at trial and answer questions”he said. “When we talk about people who do not want the trial to take place, we must not point the finger at us. What would I have to gain from it? I took 50 years! I want to be able to answer to the questions of the civil parties because I consider it to be respectful.”
In order to avoid a total deadlock in the situation, the president of the court, Laurence Massart, asked the head of the investigation “to contact the federal police officials who are in charge of the transfer of the detainees and to ask them what is the transfer protocol as well as the individual modalities for the transfer of the accused detainees which have been put in place today”. This duty of additional investigation should be returned by 3:00 p.m. Tuesday. The hearing is suspended in the meantime.
Apart from the problem of the conditions for the transfer of the accused, Laurence Massart also asked, just before the suspension of the hearing, the head of the investigation to interview the relatives of two victims of the attacks which ended their lives in 2021 and in 2022 to determine if their deaths are related to the attacks. She also noted two new constitutions of civil parties.