BRUSSELS – Belgium is opening its biggest-ever trial on Monday to determine whether 10 men played a role in the 2016 Islamist suicide bombings in Brussels that killed 32 people and injured more than 300.
More than six years after the attacks, President Laurence Massart will on Monday confirm the identities of all parties in the case, including the defendants and lawyers representing around 1,000 people affected by the attacks claimed by Islamic State.
She will then address the jury, selected from a pool of 1,000 Belgians last week in a process lasting 14 hours.
Six years after the bombings, Belgium ready for the biggest trial
The trial over the Brussels bombings has clear links to the French trial over the November 2015 Paris attacks. Six of those accused in Brussels were sentenced to between 10 years and life in prison in France in June, but the Belgian trial will be different in that it will by a jury, not a judge.
The twin bombings at Brussels airport and a third bomb on the city’s subway on 22 March 2016 killed 15 men and 17 women – Belgians, Americans, Dutch, Swedes and citizens of Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Peru and Poland, many based in Brussels, domicile of the EU institutions and the military alliance NATO.
Nine men are charged with multiple murders and attempted murders in a terrorist context, with potential life sentences, and all 10 with participating in the activities of a terrorist group.
They include Mohamed Abrini, who prosecutors say went to the airport with two suicide bombers but escaped without detonating his suitcase of explosives, and Osama Krayem, a Swedish national accused of plotting to become a second Brussels subway bomber.
Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris trial, is also a defendant, along with other prosecutors who say he hosted or aided some attackers. One of the ten, believed to have been killed in Syria, will be tried in absentia.
In accordance with Belgian court procedure, the defendants have not declared their innocence or guilt.
Prosecutors are expected to begin reading the 486-page indictment on Tuesday before questioning some 370 experts and witnesses can begin.
The trial at NATO’s former headquarters is expected to last seven months and is estimated to cost at least $36.9 million.
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Reuters
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Source: sn.dk