While the trial of the attacks carried out in Paris on November 13, 2015 begins on Wednesday, September 7 in Paris, Belgium and Spain have already started, and concluded in the case of Spain, proceedings against the terrorists responsible for them. subsequent attacks on its territory.
Procedures have already started in Belgium
The November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris were followed by those in Brussels on March 22, 2016, attacks carried out by the same terrorist cell initially formed around the Belgian-Moroccan jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud. But Belgian justice has been arrested in three other terrorism cases: the arrest of Salah Abdeslam in 2016, the dismantling of the Verviers terrorist cell in 2015 and before the attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014.
For Belgium, it was there that the terrorist series began and justice has already tried some of those responsible. The attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels left four dead on May 24, 2014. The trial for assize was held two years ago and Mehdi Nemmouche was sentenced to life in prison, with 15 years available for justice. His accomplice Nacer Bendrer was sentenced to 15 years in prison. For Belgium, this attack will be followed in early 2015 by the dismantling of the Verviers terrorist cell, considered the mother cell of the attacks in Paris and Brussels, just days after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and hyper Hide on 7 January. On January 15, 2015, during a large network in the east of the country, in Verviers, a shootout broke out that resulted in the death of two terrorists. The trial took place a year later and four of them were sentenced in July 2016 to eight to sixteen years in prison. During this trial, Abdelhamid Abaaoud was also sentenced, but in absentia, to 20 years in prison.
There are also the Paris attacks, whose perpetrators left Belgium. The investigation has already given rise to a trial. The last survivor of the Paris terrorists, Salah Abdeslam manages to hide in Brussels until March. On March 15, 2016, he escaped a first arrest attempt during a shootout in which a suspect was shot, but which left four police officers injured, including a French policewoman. Salah Abdeslam was arrested three days later and the trial for that shooting took place three years ago. With his accomplice Sofiane Ayari, they were sentenced to the maximum sentence, 20 years in prison. Four days after his arrest came the attacks in Brussels. They left 32 dead and 340 injured on March 22, 2016 at Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station; this judgment, however, has not yet taken place. The trial is expected to start in a year, according to current forecasts. The process began with a decision in January to bring all ten terrorist suspects to a lower court. This trial, which is expected to last six to nine months, will be exceptional not least because it will be held in the former headquarters of NATO, which was transformed into a court for the occasion.
Heavy Penalties in Spain
In Madrid, the deadliest attacks in recent years were those in Barcelona and Cambrils in August 2017, which left 16 people dead and hundreds injured. And the trial of these attacks has already taken place and ended in May with prison sentences. Not terrorists present at the crime scene, but accomplices. None of the three accused at this trial were present, neither in the van that killed 14 people on Rambla de Barcelona on August 17, 2017, nor among the group of five terrorists who, the next day, attacked all passersby in Cambrils. All these direct killers were shot by the police. There were, therefore, three defendants, aged between 23 and 31 years. Driss Oukabir, brother of one of the dead terrorists, Mohamed Houli Chemlal, and Said Ben Iazza. The three men were not accused of murder, but of belonging to a terrorist organization, of manufacturing and possessing explosives or, finally, of complicity. The trial was long: it started in October 2020 and sentences were handed down last May.
And the sentences were heavy: the three men were sentenced to harsher sentences than those requested by the prosecutor. Mohamed Houli and Driss Oukabir were sentenced to 53 and a half and 46 years, respectively. And Said Ben Iazza is eight and a half. That doesn’t mean Houli and Oukabir will spend half a century in prison. In addition to some crimes of aggravated homicide, there are limits in Spain to the number of years actually spent in prison. In the case of the trial of the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks, the judge specifies that the maximum period of detention will be 20 years.
Four years after the attacks, a report published two weeks ago by the government establishes that of the 607 cases filed by the victims, more than 99% were processed. The Ministry of Interior responded favorably to just over half, 54%, and rejected the other part, because the alleged victims could not demonstrate their presence at the time of the facts or the existence of psychological sequelae. In total, the government claims to have paid around 7.3 million euros to the victims and their families.
