BRUSSELS — French terrorist
Salah Abdeslam,
already jailed for his role in the 2015 Paris attacks, refused to take the
stand Monday on the first day of the trial for the 2016 suicide bombings in
Brussels.
اضافة اعلان
He was one of the nine alleged members of the Daesh
cell that launched both the March 2016 suicide bombings in Belgium and the
November 2015 attacks in Paris facing terrorism charges in the Belgian capital.
“The way in which you are treating us is unfair,”
the 32-year-old told the presiding judge, leaving the dock a few minutes after
the start of the first hearing in a trial due to last at least eight months.
The Belgian attacks, in which three suicide bombers
hit Brussels airport and a crowded underground metro station, killed 32 people
and shattered the lives of hundreds of wounded or traumatized survivors.
A tenth suspect, presumed killed while fighting in
Syria, will be tried in absentia.
“Here we are like dogs,” shouted Tunisian Sofien
Ayari, an accomplice in Abdeslam’s escape, banging his fist on the wall of the
box-like dock constructed in the purpose-built court.
‘Like dogs’
While he had initially
expressed the wish to attend the hearing, Abdeslam, in a blue and white striped
polo shirt, changed his mind when he saw that Mohamed Abrini, Ayari, and other
co-defendants were being escorted out.
Abdeslam’s complaint focused on the conditions in
which he and the other defendants appeared in court, in glass-enclosed cubicles
that keep them away from their lawyers and limit communication between them.
The trial is the largest ever staged in front of a
Belgian jury, with 960 civil plaintiffs represented and the sprawling former
headquarters of the
NATO military alliance converted into a high-security court
complex.
After Monday’s preliminary hearing, the court will
sit again on October 10 to choose 12 jurors and 24 potential substitutes.
Evidential hearings will begin on October 13 and last at least until June next
year.
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