SOCIETY
ATTENTATS IN BRUSSELS
Salah Abdeslam indicted for "participation" in the Brussels attacks
Incarcerated in Fleury-Mérogis since April 2016, Salah Abdeslam awaits, silently, his trial for the attack of 13 November.
Le Monde with AFP Published today at 14:52, updated at 15:31
32 people died during the attacks in Brussels.
32 people died during the attacks in Brussels. FILIP OF SMET / AFP
Already sentenced to twenty years in prison for a shooting and awaiting trial on the attacks of 13 November, Salah Abdeslam sees the legal proceedings against him grow even more. The 30-year-old has been formally indicted for "participation in the activities of a terrorist group" in the file of the attacks of March 22, 2016 in Brussels, announced the federal prosecutor's office Monday, August 12. This announcement has confirmed information circulating in the Belgian press for a few days.
These suicide attacks, claimed by the group Islamic State (EI), had left 32 dead and more than 340 wounded at the international airport of Brussels-Zaventem and in a metro station of the European capital. They had been commissioned from Syria and organized by a Franco-Belgian cell also at the origin of the attacks of 13 November 2015 in Paris (130 dead).
Read also How the cell Verviers led to the attacks in Paris and Brussels
Trial of the attacks of 13 November in 2021
Before this announcement, twelve people had already been indicted in the case of March 22 in Brussels, which also has some 800 civil parties. The trial of the jihadist attacks in the Belgian capital will open next year and will be held on the former NATO site. It should last from six to eight months. Mohamed Abrini and Osama Krayem, arrested in April 2016, are among the main suspects of these attacks. The first admitted to being "the man in the hat" pushing a suitcase stuffed with explosives on a cart alongside the two kamikazes at the airport. He then abandoned her and fled.
The trial of the Paris bombings must be held in 2021, at the earliest. A total of fourteen people, including eleven remand prisoners, are indicted in this sprawling investigation.
A small radicalized offender
A small radicalized offender in the Brussels municipality of Molenbeek, Salah Abdeslam, incarcerated in France, is the only living member of the jihadist commandos of the attacks of 13 November. In April 2018 he was sentenced in his absence to twenty years in prison in Brussels for terrorist assassination attempts. He had participated in a shootout against police in Brussels on 15 March 2016, three days before his arrest in Molenbeek.
Salah Abdeslam had also left the three suicide bombers of the Stade de France the night of the attacks before giving up an explosive belt, suggesting that he too should lead a suicide attack.