Thirteen men and a woman had been tried, suspected of having provided commandos from Belgium. Four of the defendants had been released on June 30, three others had benefited from a suspension of their conviction, and two prison sentences had been pronounced, the others being accompanied by the stay.
Le Monde with AFP
The federal prosecution decided not to appeal the judgment rendered on June 30 in Brussels at the trial of the Belgian accomplices of the jihadist attacks which left a hundred and thirty deaths in Paris on November 13, 2015, announced Tuesday, August 2, the Word of the Belgian federal prosecution, Eric Van Duyse. Consequently, “the judgment is final,” he told the Agency France-Presse (AFP). The prosecution had one month to appeal.
In this dossier called “Paris Bis”, thirteen men and a woman had been tried in the spring, suspected of having provided more or less important aid to the commandos of November 13 from Belgium (accommodation, driving by car, False papers make, etc.).
Ultimately, four of the fourteen defendants had been released on June 30, three others had benefited from a suspension of their conviction, and only two firm prison sentences had been pronounced (eighteen months and thirty-five days ), the others being accompanied by the stay. The Brussels Criminal Court had also imposed a working sentence of general interest.
A decision deemed mild
The judgment had been generally praised for his leniency by defense lawyers. “This is a very fair, very correct decision,” reacted Virginie Taelman, whose client, Abid Aberkane, had however been severely pinned by the accusation.
cousin of Salah Abdeslam, the only member still alive of the commandos of November 13, Abid Aberkane had hosted the French jihadist in Molenbeek during the last days of his run, before his arrest, March 18, 2016.
He received a three -year suspended prison sentence, while the prosecution had requested a year more. The judges dismissed certain grievances, considering, among other things, that it could not be criticized for having made the propaganda of the Islamic State group.
In the judicial treatment of this wave of 2015-2016 attacks claimed by IS, the next step is the trial scheduled for October 10 for the ten accused of the attacks perpetrated in Brussels on March 22, 2016 (thirty -Meux dead) by the same jihadist cell.
Among the accused are – as in the Parisian trial, which ended on June 29 -, Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini, who had accompanied the attackers in Paris. Mohamed Abrini is known as the “hats man” of the Brussels attacks (he had given up exploding at the airport). MM. Abdeslam, 32, and Mohamed Abrini, 37, were sentenced to Paris to life prison. For the first, the Assize Court pronounced the highest sanction of the French Criminal Code, namely the incompressible perpetuity. For the second, the perpetuity was accompanied by a safety sentence of twenty-two years. Both were transferred in mid-July to Belgian prisons.