Brussels: Europe and the Arabs

The trial sessions of the people suspected of involvement in the March 22, 2016 attacks in Brussels and Zaventem will begin on December 5. This is according to a decision issued by the head of the Criminal Court during a session that took place today, Friday, and lasted about an hour, and according to an email message sent by the court to the lawyers in the file. A few days before, on November 30, the jury will be assembled for trial.

The trial was supposed to begin on October 10 at the Justitia Building in Haren, the former headquarters of NATO in Brussels. However, the individual glass boxes in which the nine defendants had to sit caused a heated debate at the initial hearing on September 12. Past . According to the defendants' lawyer, the funds violate the rights of the defense. ,

In a ruling issued on September 16, the criminal court agreed with the defense and decided to demolish the boxes and replace them with one large box in which there is room for all the defendants. The court gave as an example the defendants box that was used in the French criminal court around the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris.

On September 22, the judiciary announced that the new fund would not be ready by October 10, the date when the jury should be assembled. News of the fund's amendment was received on November 14. However, all of the trial parties and the 800-member jury must be called again, and the federal prosecutor has told the court that this will only be possible by November 15, according to an email the jury chief sent to the parties. . There must be at least fifteen days between that summons and the day the jury is formed. Therefore, the head of the criminal court decided that the jury meeting would be on Wednesday, November 30.

The date for the start of the hearings will be on December 5, in the so-called “trial of the century” to hold accountable the people who killed 32 people and injured more than 300 others in the Brussels attacks that took place in March 2016 and included the Belgian capital’s airport and a domestic train station.

The investigation office had requested the referral of Salah Abd al-Salam, Osama Attar, Muhammad Abrini, Sufyan Ayari, Osama Karim, Ali al-Haddad, Bilal al-Makhukhi, and Herve Payingang, who are of “African descent,” to the Criminal Court, and requested the referral of Ismail and Ibrahim to Farsi. , while the Bureau of Investigation suggested not to prosecute three suspects, namely Faisal Shifu, Ibrahim Tabishi and Youssef Al-Ajmi.

Among the 13 people, who are currently in French prisons, such as Salah Abdel Salam, the only survivor among the perpetrators of the Paris attacks in November 2015, and there are also those who are still on the run and Belgium has put him on the international wanted list, and it is not known until now if he is alive or died in Syria During combat operations within the ranks of extremist armed groups

In mid-July 2019, it was announced that the investigations had ended, and the investigation file was handed over to the Public Prosecutor, following the completion of the investigations in June of the same year, which lasted three years and three months. The invitation file includes 6,200 minutes and thousands of documents that are being translated into 9 different languages ​​representing The majority of victims.