Since Tuesday, the floor has been given to the defense at the trial of the Brussels attacks which killed 32 people in 2016. Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers were the first to plead. Faced with the jurors, they maintained that he had played no active role and demanded his acquittal.
Salah Abdeslam has always denied his involvement in the terrorist attacks of March 22, 2016 in Brussels. These bomb attacks left 32 dead and more than 300 injured. The only survivor of the jihadist commando of November 13, 2015 in Paris, already sentenced in France to life imprisonment, incurs a life prison sentence in Belgium.
>> Transferred from France, Salah Abdeslam was imprisoned in Belgium
On the day of the attacks claimed by the Islamic State, Salah Abdeslam was in prison. He had been arrested four days earlier, which had also prompted the rest of the jihadist team to take action by detonating three bombs at the airport and in the metro. “It is the construction of his image of the monster of the Paris attacks that explains his presence here”, attack at the hearing Me Delphine Paci, his lawyer.
“This man was convicted for Paris. He is innocent for Brussels!”
Me Delphine PaciIn front of the Assize Court of Brussels
She stares into the eyes of the popular juror. “It’s tempting, isn’t it, to give in to the spirit of vengeance? she launches to these twelve men and women who will have to decide on the guilt of the accused, now 33 years old. “Salah Abdeslam did not make bombs. His fingerprints are not on Kalashnikov magazines,” she continues insisting on the facts, only the facts.
For long hours, his defense dismantles, point by point, the thesis that he took part in the preparations for the attacks in Belgium. “You will have to determine what are the acts of Abdeslam without which these attacks would not have taken place”, insisted a lot Me Michel Bouchat, his other lawyer.
Salah Abdeslam impassive in the box
Trimmed beard and white shirt, the Frenchman listened, without any particular reaction, to his two defenders who are relayed. But when questioned about his role in the Brussels attacks, he said: “I have no blood on my hands, they are not my victims.” Inaudible words, concedes Me Paci. But for her and her colleague, the prosecution, which claims her conviction as a co-author of the attacks, has multiplied the untruths. “Salah Abdeslam has already been sentenced in France to irreducible life imprisonment”, she recalled, once again challenging the jurors : “Whatever your decision, he will go back to his miserable cell alone.”
>> Brussels attacks: what you need to know about the river trial which opened for six months
The defense arguments will continue until July 4. Ten defendants, including six already convicted in Paris, are tried before the Brussels Assize Court. The guilty verdict is expected around July 20. The sentences will be decided next September.