2023-11-03 11:23:00
Me Gilles Vanderbeck, lawyer for Abdelwahab Guerni, filed this request for recusal at the registry this Friday morning. The procedure provides that the registry must notify it within 24 hours to the magistrates at the seat. They then have 48 hours to say whether they withdraw or not.
It is extremely rare for a seat to withdraw on its own initiative after such a request made when the trial is imminent. Especially since the three magistrates of the seat had to study the file at length before sitting and the file – which contains 328 boxes – is particularly voluminous.
If the magistrates of the seat do not withdraw on their own initiative, the request for recusal is examined by a civil chamber of the court of appeal. It is therefore ruled out that the court will begin examining the case on Monday. The examination of the request for recusal by the court of appeal could be concluded, at best, in a week.
Questioned by La Libre, Me Vanderbeck did not wish to expand on the reasons supporting the request for recusal. It simply refers to article 128 of the judicial code, which relates to disqualification for legitimate suspicion.
A gigantic trial
The Sky ECC trial is perhaps the largest trial ever held in Belgium in terms of defendants. A total of 129 people are being prosecuted in this file: it concerns large-scale cocaine trafficking between South America and Belgium, and cannabis trafficking on an industrial scale between Morocco and Belgium.
The common denominator of this file is the cracking, by the federal judicial police, of the Sky ECC encrypted messaging, which made it possible to advance investigations. Sky ECC was widely used by criminals involved in cocaine trafficking.
The trial, expected to last several months, was to be held at Justitia, the former NATO headquarters which hosted the trial for the attacks of March 22, 2016. The planned security measures are important given the profile of certain defendants.
The two main ones are Eridan Munoz Guerrero, a 50-year-old Albanian, who was arrested in South America, and Abdelwahab Guerni, a 56-year-old Algerian born in Belgium, who has already been prosecuted in drug cases.
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