November 13: the sentences of the 14 Belgian accomplices are now final



Lhe federal prosecutor’s office has decided not to appeal the judgment rendered on June 30 in Brussels during the trial of Belgian accomplices in the jihadist attacks which killed 130 people in Paris on November 13, 2015, announced Tuesday, August 2, to the Agency France-Presse a spokesperson.

In this file called “Paris bis”, fourteen people had been tried between mid-April and mid-May, suspected of having provided more or less significant assistance to the November 13 commandos from Belgium (accommodation, driving , making false papers, etc.). The trial ended with sentences generally lower than those sought by the prosecution. The judgment is now final, said the spokesperson for the federal prosecution, Éric Van Duyse. The prosecution had one month to appeal.

A rather lenient Belgian verdict

The judgment was generally praised for its leniency by defense lawyers. “It’s a very fair, very correct decision,” reacted Virginie Taelman, whose client, Abid Aberkane, had nevertheless been severely pinned down by the prosecution. Cousin of Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the November 13 commandos, Abid Aberkane had hosted the French jihadist in Molenbeek during the last days of his run before his arrest on March 18, 2016. He received a three-year suspended prison sentence. , while the prosecution had requested one more year. The judges dismissed certain grievances, finding in particular that he could not be accused of having made propaganda for the Islamic State group.

READ ALSOSalah Abdeslam, a haunting enigma

In the judicial treatment of this wave of 2015-2016 attacks claimed by IS, the next step is the trial scheduled from October 10 for the ten accused of the attacks committed in Brussels on March 22, 2016 (32 dead) by the same jihadist cell. Among the accused are, as in the Paris trial completed on June 29, Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini, who had accompanied the attackers to Paris. Abrini is known as the “man in the hat” of the Brussels attacks (he had given up on blowing himself up at the airport).

Salah Abdeslam, 32, and Mohamed Abrini, 37, were sentenced in Paris to life imprisonment. For the first, the Assize Court pronounced the highest sanction of the French Penal Code, namely incompressible life imprisonment. For the second, life was accompanied by a 22-year security sentence. Both were transferred in mid-July to Belgian prisons.

READ ALSOTrial of November 13: Abdeslam sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment




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