2023-09-08 19:35:00
Tempers ran hot at the trial of the Brussels attacks. And the breakdown of the air conditioning is not necessarily responsible for the complexity of the case which overheats the brains of all the parties to the trial.
In front of a fan allowing the defense lawyers to air their ideas, the defendants’ counsel tries to bring out the law in the debate on the absorption of sentences between the trials of the attacks in Brussels and Paris as well as on the competition of offenses.
Behind their fan, the jurors are probably losing touch with this complex debate since even the Court declared itself incompetent to clarify this crucial aspect. It will therefore be during the deliberation that the decision will be decided. While knowing that the defense, in particular that of Salah Abdeslam, has already appealed to the Court of Cassation. Prosecutor’s Office, Court and lawyers: everyone has their own analysis and questions “We are in a unique case,” says a lawyer.
Even the defense is not aligned: between Delphine Paci and Gisèle Stuyck, lawyers for Abdeslam and Krayem respectively, the tension was real after the Swede’s lawyer took the opposite view of the analysis made by the majority of his defense colleagues. It’s heating up, we can confirm it. “It’s 29.6°,” the president chokes up, looking at a thermometer placed in front of her.
Trial of the attacks in Brussels: why it is impossible to strip one of the accused of his Belgian nationality
“Compulsive life imprisonment” accused of the prosecution
This Friday, it was the defenses of Osama Krayem, Sofien Ayari and Hervé Bayingana who took the floor to argue on the sentences. Bayingana and Ayari are quite calm in this case since their guilt was only recognized for participation in the activities of a terrorist group. They were acquitted of the murders. They therefore only risk 10 years maximum and have been in prison for 7 years and 5 months (except that Ayari was sentenced to 30 years for the Paris attacks).
Isa Gultaslar, Ayari’s lawyer, then played the collective card. Since there was not much to plead for his client, he stood up against the federal prosecutor’s office which, during its indictment, asked for the maximum sentence for each of the guys and found no mitigating circumstances. . He spoke of a “compulsive life sentence” and asked the jury for nuance. “It’s not because we throw everyone overboard that the cruise will be more pleasant,” he said, comparing the accused to travelers in the hold of an ocean liner.
Osama Krayem is one of the defendants in this trial who could be the first to be thrown overboard. Like Abrini, he was carrying a bag of explosives on March 22, 2016 but eventually turned around and defused his bomb. “If you impose the maximum sentence on someone who gives up, what would have been the sentence for someone who had gone to the end (and who would not have lost their life)?” asks Me Jane Peissel.
Bayingana released and sent back to Rwanda?
Hervé Bayigana could emerge free from this trial. But the game is not yet over for the refugee of Rwandan origin. During its indictment, the federal prosecutor’s office demanded his forfeiture of Belgian nationality. “The sky has fallen on my head,” says lawyer Lurquin. If Hervé is released on the day of the sentence, when he leaves this box, police officers will handcuff him and take him to the Steenokerzeel closed center awaiting repatriation to Rwanda…” This is the most extreme scenario. dark which the lawyer does not want to believe and he asks the juror one last time: “It is you who have the keys to the box, I ask you to open it”.
Monday, final defense argument on the sentence with Ali El Haddad Asufi. The jury will then retire to deliberate on sentences.
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