Belgium launches biggest criminal trial in its history after 2016 terror attacks
Six and a half years after terrorist attacks that left a legacy of death, injury and shock, Belgium is launching the biggest criminal trial in its history.
Ten people will face charges relating to the murder of 32 people in March 2016, when bombs exploded at Brussels Airport and then on a metro train that was passing through the city’s European quarter.
It was the deadliest attack on Belgium since the end of the Second World War and led to vigils, protests, border checks, parliamentary inquiries and even the partial evacuation of the nation’s nuclear power stations.
The prime suspect in the trial will be Salah Abdeslam, who has already been convicted at a trial in France for his part in terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, which killed 130 people. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, without parole.
Nine of the defendants will be present in court. A tenth, Oussama Atar, is being tried in his absence, although it is believed that he may have been killed in Syria.
Abdeslam is one of five defendants who were convicted by the French courts, but who now face further punishment on behalf of the Belgian authorities. They are all alleged to have been involved in both sets of attacks, operating on behalf of Islamic State.
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The jury will be told that a “terrorist cell” based in Brussels was actually planning to carry out a more ambitious series of coordinated attacks at the European Football Championship tournament in France, later in 2016.
However, it will be alleged, they changed their plans following the arrest of Abdeslam on 18 March after a police operation in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.
Four days later, members of the cell attacked Brussels instead, and the murders began at the airport, it will be claimed.
CCTV footage is said to show three men pushing three trolleys through the departure terminal shortly before the explosions. The prosecution will allege that each man was carrying a bomb, but that only two of them were detonated by suicide attackers.
A view of the courtroom prior to the selection of the jury at the Justitia building in Brussels
The third man, they will claim, was Mohamed Abrini, who was widely identified as “the man in the hat” in a CCTV image released by police after the attacks. The jury will be told that he has been friends with Abdeslam since childhood and that he, too, was previously convicted by the court in France.
The airport was evacuated amid scenes of chaos and fear. But just an hour and a quarter after the airport explosions, another device was detonated in the middle carriage of a train at Maelbeek metro station, not far from the headquarters of the European Commission.
As well as the 32 people who were killed by the attacks, three terrorists also died. More than 300 people were injured, 62 of them critically. Earlier this year, a young Belgian woman, who had been in the airport at the time of the attack, decided to be euthanised because of the “intolerable psychological” strain it had placed on her life.
Security forces patrol the area surrounding the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels in March 2016 following a terror attack
Charles Michel, then the Belgian prime minister and now the president of the European Council, described the attack as “blind, violent and cowardly”.
The trial will be held in the former NATO headquarter building in Brussels. Millions of pounds have been spent on creating facilities capable of hosting such a high-profile trial, although its start was delayed after objections about the secure “glass box” that would house the defendants.
Victims and their families have long complained that it has taken too long for them to see justice being played out and that attention has been placed on the perpetrators and not on the victims.
Belgian authorities have claimed that the process of bringing the defendants to court has been extremely complex, both legally and logistically, and that delivering justice in such cases can take years.
Around 1,000 people were summoned as possible candidates to be either jurors or understudies. That process is now complete, and the trial will start. It is expected to stretch well into 2023, and cost around £30m. But Belgium hopes that it will eventually deliver a sense of closure and justice, after so many years of waiting.
Sky News has obtained shocking CCTV from inside the main hospital in the city of Sweida in southern Syria – where our team found more than 90 corpses laid out in the grounds following a week of intense fighting.
Warning this article shows images of a shooting
The CCTV images show men in army fatigues shooting dead a volunteer dressed in medical scrubs at point-blank range while a crowd of other terrified health workers are held at gunpoint with their hands in the air.
The mainly Druze city of Sweida was the scene of nearly a week of violent clashes, looting and executions last month which plunged the new authorities into their worst crisis since the toppling of the country’s former dictator Bashar al Assad.
The new Syrian government troops were accused of partaking in the atrocities they were sent in to quell between the Druze minority and the Arab Bedouin minority groups.
The government troops were forced to withdraw when Israeli jets entered the fray, saying they were protecting the Druze minority and bombed army targets in Sweida and the capital Damascus.
Men in military fatigues enter the hospital.
The hospital volunteer is seen on the floor moments before he was shot
A second man fires with a handgun
Days of bloodletting ensued, with multiple Arab tribes, Druze militia and armed gangs engaging in pitched battles and looting before a ceasefire was agreed.
The government troops then set up checkpoints and barricades encircling Sweida to prevent the Arab tribes re-entering.
The extrajudicial killing captured on CCTV inside the Sweida hospital is corroborated by eyewitnesses we spoke to who were among the group, as well as other medics in the hospital and a number of survivors and patients.
Body bags in the grounds of hospital
The CCTV is date- and time-stamped as mid-afternoon on 16 July and the different camera angles show the men (who tell the hospital workers they are government troops) marauding through the hospital; and in at least one case, smashing the CCTV cameras with the butt of a rifle.
One of the nurses present, who requested anonymity, told us: “They told us if we talked about the shooting or showed any film, we’d be killed too. I thought I was going to die.”
Dr Obeida Abu Fakher, a doctor who was in the operating section at the time, told us: “They told us they were the new Syrian army and interior police. We cannot have peace with these people. They are terrorists.”
Read more:
Inside Sweida: The Syrian city ravaged by sectarian violence
Who are the Druze and who are they fighting in Syria?
Why Israel is getting involved in Syria’s internal fighting
A destroyed ambulance in Sweida
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Multiple patients and survivors told us when we visited the hospital last month that government troops had participated in the horror which swept through Sweida for days but this is the first visual evidence that some took part in atrocities inside the main hospital.
In other images, one of the men can be seen smashing the CCTV camera with the butt of his rifle – and another is wearing a black sweater which appears to be the uniform associated with the country’s interior security.
One survivor calling himself Mustafa Sehnawi, an American citizen from New Jersey, told us: “It’s the government who sent those troops, it’s the government of Syria who killed those people… we need help.”
Mustafa Sehnawi speaks to Sky’s Alex Crawford
A destroyed tank in Sweida
The government responded with a statement from the interior ministry saying they would be investigating the incident which they “denounced and condemned” in the strongest terms.
The statement went on to promise all those involved would be “held accountable” and punished.
The new Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly next month in New York – the first time a Syrian leader has attended since 1967 – and what happened in Sweida is certain to be among the urgent topics of discussion.
A funeral was held for five Al Jazeera journalists who were targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday night, as the UN said the killings were a “grave breach of international law”.
Correspondents Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal, died after a strike on a tent near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The Israeli military defended the attack, claiming the most prominent of the group, Sharif, was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and only “posed as a journalist” – claims consistently denied by Sharif himself, Al Jazeera and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
A sixth journalist – a freelancer called Mohammad al Khaldi – was also killed in the strike, medics at the Al Shifa Hospital told Reuters.
Mourners attend the funeral of the Al Jazeera journalists. Pic: Reuters
Al Jazeera called the killing of its journalists a “targeted assassination” and described its employees as some of the “last remaining voices within Gaza”.
Read more:
Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza
Al Jazeera condemns ‘assassination’ of its journalists in Gaza
Al Jazeera staff members gather at the network’s studios, to remember their colleagues. Pic: Reuters
“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents… by the Israeli occupation forces in yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom,” the broadcaster said.
“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities.
“The order to assassinate Anas Al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”
The United Nations (UN) secretary-general condemned the killing of the five journalists and called for it to be investigated.
Mourners carry the body of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif.
Pic: Reuters
A spokesperson said in a media briefing: “These latest killings highlight the extreme risks that journalists continue to face when covering this ongoing conflict.
“The secretary-general calls for an independent, impartial investigation into these latest killings.”
He added that “at least” 242 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began.
The UN’s human rights office condemned the killings earlier on Monday, labelling the strike by Israel a “grave breach of international humanitarian law”.
The war began on 7 October in 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli numbers.
Of the 50 hostages still in Gaza, Israeli authorities say 20 are still alive.
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Israel’s offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza.
It comes as prominent journalists across media organisations continue to join calls for access to Gaza, which Israel has forbidden throughout the war.
On Sunday, Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should let the UN Security Council into Gaza.
“Take journalists with you so that you can verify exactly what is happening in Gaza,” he said.
The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.
The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.
Gaza latest: Follow live updates
The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.
The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.
Gazan journalist Anas Al-Sharif leaves behind a wife and two children
No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.
Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.
There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.
This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.
It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.
Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more from Sky News:
Journalists demand access to Gaza
Sky News on Israel’s ‘war on truth’
Reporters issue demand to Israel
I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.
His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.
“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.
Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.
“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”
This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.
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