Belgian justice delivered its verdict this Tuesday, October 29 and convicted several dozen people following a mega-trial which saw more than 120 defendants appear in court. They are found guilty of having, to varying degrees, organized or participated in this international trafficking between Latin America, North Africa and Europe. This trial was nicknamed SkyECC after the name of the encrypted messaging used by the criminals.
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With our correspondent in Brussels, Pierre Benazet
More than 100 of them were sentenced this Tuesday, October 29 in Brussels to sentences ranging from fourteen months to 17 years of detention. The main leaders of drug trafficking were sentenced to minimum seven years. The Algerian Abdelwahab Guerni, whom the prosecutor accused in particular of importing narcotics from Latin America and then extracting them from the port of Antwerp, was sentenced to 17 years. The Albanian Eridan Muñoz-Guerrero, accused of having managed several cocaine processing laboratories in Brussels, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Among the perpetrators is a police officer sentenced to five years for providing the network with information from police databases.
It all started on March 9, 2021 with a wave of searches. 1,800 Belgian, Dutch and French police officers were mobilized following the first decryptions of EncroChat then SkyECC messaging. Weapons, one million euros in cash, 160 tons of cannabis, and 17 tons of cocaine were seized.
The constellation of drug trafficking around the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam will give rise to other trials, because only half of the seized messages had already been decrypted at the opening of this SkyECC trial.
Also readBelgium: vast operation against organized crime after the interception of encrypted exchanges