For a week, the lawyers of the accused have ferrated with the Belgian investigators to update the shortcuts and the weaknesses of certain aspects of the instruction.
by and
Exemplary by his organization, the means allocated to him, the attention given to the speech of the victims, the trial of the attacks of 13-November is also by the quality of the defense enjoyed by the defendants, who will not be able to complain about having been poorly accompanied during these long months of court.
The trial chapter that ended Wednesday, March 9 was devoted to the logistical preparations for the attacks: for a week, the Belgian investigators explained their conclusions on the purchase of weapons, false papers, the rental of places and The convoy of Kamikazes until Belgium. This sequence has highlighted the importance of the stewards of terror, but also the pugnacity of their lawyers, often young, to offer a different reading of this temporary file of several hundred thousand pages.
From Thursday, March 10, the accused, directly asked about the topics covered for seven days, will have to defend themselves. Before that, we listened to their lawyers introducing doubt, disassemble the hasty hypotheses, propose other tracks, challenge here a telephone boundage, there the interpretation of an exchange of SMS. They advanced their pawns, marked points, highlighting, sometimes cruelly, shortcuts, weaknesses and slights of certain aspects of the instruction. From this week of jousts, minutes after minutes, we have retained four emblematic scenes.
Ali El Haddad Asufi and the “kilo of arms”
Ali El Haddad Asufi is accused of having gone to the Netherlands in October 2015 to buy Kalashnikovs. Failure to have found trace of a transaction, the Prosecution is based on SMS exchanges between him and his cousin, who lives in Amsterdam, in which he indicates wanting to buy “Clio”. For the Prosecution, this coded language refers to weapons. For the Defense, it’s cannabis.
“For large amounts of STUPS, is not it normal to take precautions? Request one of his lawyers, Jonathan de Taye, to the Belgian investigator who files videoconferencing.
– For weapons too, we take precautions! defends it.
– Yes, but you have to demonstrate that it’s weapons that we went to search!
– But you too must demonstrate that it’s stups! goes astray, little by the proceedings.
– But no! No ! I do not have to demonstrate anything at all! “, exclaims Taye, who must recall that cardinal judicial principle that was known by all: the burden of proof returns to the Prosecution, it is not at the defense to prove the innocence of the accused.
You have 68.16% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.