On March 22, 2016, two successive explosions shook Brussels, the first at 7:58 a.m. at Zaventem airport, the second at 9:11 a.m. at Maelbeek metro station. In total, the attacks left 340 injured and 32 dead, plus the three terrorists. After the trial in Paris of the attacks of November 13, 2015, committed by the same terrorist cell, the second major trial therefore begins in Brussels, that of March 22.
With our correspondent in Brussels, Pierre Benazet
It is in the former headquarters of NATO that this trial of the attacks of March 22, 2016 opens this Monday, December 5, a site fitted out in particular for this trial with, for example, a main courtroom. doubled by eight additional rooms.
They are intended to accommodate the civil parties who number 960.
An extraordinary trial for Belgium, which waited for the end in France of the November 13 attacks trialsince five of the ten defendants in the Brussels trial have already been sentenced at the end of the Paris trial, including, for example, Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini to life imprisonment.
Much of the trial will be based on elements common to that of the Paris trial, but with ultimately different procedures. Despite the proximity of law and case law between Belgium and France, this is an assize trial where a popular jury will decide whether each of the accused is guilty.
Occurring four months after the Paris attacks, they are the direct consequence of it in a way, because the arrest of Salah Abdeslam in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean four days earlier would have precipitated the decision of the remaining members of the terrorist cell to move on to the action.
►Read again: At the trial of the Brussels attacks, a day devoted to the formation of the jury