Concerning Salah Abdeslam, the Assize Court referred to a previous Belgian conviction handed down in 2018. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a shooting with police officers in March 2016.
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The verdict came after nine months of trial. Mohamed Abrini, “the man in the hat” who accompanied the two jihadists who died in suicide bombings at Brussels airport on March 22, 2016, was sentenced to imprisonment on Friday September 15 for his participation in the attacks.. Concerning Salah Abdeslam, the Assize Court did not impose a new sentence and referred to a previous Belgian conviction in 2018. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a shooting with police officers in March 2016.
The French jihadist, however, remains considered by Belgian justice as one of the co-perpetrators of the Brussels attacks. The Assize Court, which delivered its verdict after four days of deliberations, did not follow the requisitions of the federal prosecutor’s office which had requested life imprisonment for Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini. Salah Abdeslam is “very relieved”commented his lawyer, Michel Bouchat, after the verdict.
Abdeslam and Abrini already sentenced to life imprisonment in France
The two men had already been sentenced in France in 2022 for their participation in the attacks of November 13, 2015 which left 130 dead. Salah Abdeslam was sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment. Mohamed Abrini was sentenced to life imprisonment with a security sentence of 22 years.
In addition, among the accused, three were sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday by the assize court : Osama Atar, tried in absentia because he is presumed dead in Syria, and Bilal El Makhoukhi, as well as Osama Krayem who had given up on blowing himself up in the metro. Sofien Ayari, already convicted like Salah Abdeslam for the March 15 shooting in the Brussels commune of Forest, benefited from the same legal reasoning and no additional sentence was handed down against him. Finally, Ali El Haddad Asufi and Hervé Bayingana Muhirwa were sentenced to 20 years and 10 years of imprisonment respectively.
On the morning of March 22, 2016, two men blew themselves up in the departure hall of Brussels-Zaventem airport and a third, an hour later, in a metro train at Maelbeek station. The attack left 32 dead and hundreds injured. But the Assize Court counted 35 deaths, estimating that three deaths that occurred later had a direct link to the explosions.