A Belgian court yesterday sentenced Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam and a coaccused to 20 years in prison for trying to kill police during a shootout in Brussels in 2016.
Judge Marie-France Keutgen told the courtroom that 28-year-old Abdeslam and Tunisian Sofien Ayari, 24, had been found guilty of “attempted terrorist murder” during the shootout in March 2016.
Abdeslam is in a prison in northern France awaiting trial for his role in the Islamic State group attacks in Paris in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed. Prosecutors say he is the lone survivor of a suicide squad.
Photo: Reuters
Neither Abdeslam nor Ayari, who is in custody in Belgium, were present for yesterday’s judgement, but despite the absence of the accused, security was tight around the Brussels court, with heavily armed police on guard.
Twenty years is the maximum sentence for the charge against the pair.
By the time of the shootout in the Brussels district of Forest on March 15, 2016, Abdeslam had been in hiding for four months after fleeing Paris the night his elder brother blew himself up at a cafe.
Prosecutors who accuse Abdeslam of helping organize the attacks and ferry former fighters from Syria around Europe say he, too, would have died if his suicide vest had not failed to detonate.
His lawyers did not dispute that Abdeslam was in Paris during the attacks.
Belgium police finally stumbled across him when, with French officers, they went to inspect a suspect apartment in Forest and then came under a hail of gunfire which wounded four of them.
After a three-hour siege ended with marksmen killing a 35-year-old Algerian called Mohamed Belkaid, police found an arms cache.
Abdeslam’s DNA found at the scene linked him to the shoot out and that led to his arrest three days later in a different apartment in the Belgian capital.
Four days after his arrest, suicide bombers attacked Brussels Airport and the city’s metro system, killing 32 people.
Officials believe Abdeslam had links with the bombers and that they brought forward their attack because they feared Abdeslam might reveal their plans under interrogation.
Abdeslam was present on the opening day of the trial, but refused to answer the judge’s questions.
One of his lawyers, Sven Mar, yesterday told reporters that he would discuss the case with his client before determining whether to appeal.
Additional reporting by AP
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