The Brussels Assize Court, called to decide on the sentences to be imposed on eight defendants for the double terrorist attack of March 22, 2016, at Zaventem airport and the Maelbeek metro station, did not sentence, Friday 15 September, the French Salah Abdeslam, sole survivor of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris (130 dead) to life imprisonment, as many expected. The court referred to a previous decision by the Belgian courts, handed down in 2018, when Abdeslam was sentenced to twenty years for a shooting with police officers that occurred in Forest in March 2016. He was, however, considered one of the co-perpetrators of the attacks. from Brussels, which he tried to deny until the end.
His accomplice and friend Mohamed Abrini was sentenced to thirty years of detention, accompanied by a “release” (a control by the sentence enforcement court) of five years. The other defendants, several of whom, like him, had already been sentenced for their participation in the 2015 attacks in Paris, received sentences ranging from ten years in prison to life (for Osama Krayem, who had received thirty years with a sentence of two-thirds security in Paris).
At the end of July, the Brussels popular jury, made up of twelve members, convicted Abdeslam, Abrini and four of their co-defendants for “assassinations and attempted assassinations in a terrorist context”. Two other defendants were found guilty only for their “participation in the activities of a terrorist group”, the last two being acquitted. The attacks perpetrated by four of their accomplices carrying explosives caused the death of 35 people, the Assize Court having decided to add three deaths occurring later to the initial list of 32 victims.
The Belgian procedure requires, after a deliberation on guilt – it was concluded in July – another debate on the sentences. This time he brought together the jury and three magistrates for the last five days, in a secret link.
In what looked like a last stand, Salah Abdeslam’s lawyers filed, on September 4, an (emergency) summary appeal aimed at having their client serve his sentence in Belgium, and not in France, where he was sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment, in June 2022, for his participation in the attacks of November 13, 2015. “Sending me to France is sending me to death…” said the accused, citing in particular the fact that his family ties are in Belgium. French justice, however, handed him over to Belgium in July 2022, on the condition that he crosses the border again on September 30 at the latest.
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