A convict of November 13, to whom France wanted to avoid prison, finally imprisoned in Belgium

Abdellah Chouaa, sentenced to one prison term and three years suspended in the context of the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015, has been imprisoned for almost a month in Belgium, according to information from France Inter and the newspaper Le Parisien this Wednesday March 15. He is serving his sentence decided in France while the French justice, at the end of the trial, had assured him that he would not return to prison.

Despite this assurance, Abdellah Chouaa was asked to report to the Belgian prison of Saint-Gilles in Belgium on February 17, with the prospect of benefiting from an adjustment of his French sentence. In Belgium, to be able to benefit from an adjustment of sentence, under electronic bracelet for example, it is necessary to be imprisoned, if only for a few hours. “And that’s what the director of the penitentiary establishment assured us on the phone”explains to France Inter master Adrien Sorrentino, lawyer for Abdellah Chouaa, “that he would come out during the day. So, in the morning, he said goodbye to his children as usual. Except that he didn’t come back in the evening.”

Error by the management of the Belgian prison

What explains this situation is that the director of the prison was mistaken, as she admitted in an email addressed to her lawyers. Persons convicted of terrorism cannot benefit from such a sentence adjustment, according to Belgian law. And so this 42-year-old man sentenced for “logistical assistance in the preparation of attacks”, he drove to the airport future members of the commandos going to Syria, has been imprisoned for almost a month.

“My client underwent 5.30 hours of interrogation on his family life, his social situation, but also on the merits of the case, when he has already been convicted!”, is surprised his French lawyer. A new interrogation of this kind still awaits him in the coming days. “The risk is that even before the decision is made, he will have executed in prison the sentence that he should have, according to the law, executed outside. It’s relentlessness”deplores Me Adrien Sorrentino who does not take off: “It is a complete failure of international cooperation in matters of justice.”