Several defendants in the trial for the 2016 jihadist attacks in Brussels denounced this Friday the “systematic” strip searches suffered for transfer to the courts, threatening Mohamed Abrini again to leave the box if the police do not put an end to it .
“It’s really hysteria. We have to stop all this, in these conditions I will not come,” launched the Belgian-Moroccan known as the “man with the hat” who had given up blowing himself up on March 22, 2016 at the Brussels airport.
That day, suicide bombings claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group had killed 32 people and injured several hundred at the airport and in the metro in the Belgian capital.
A trial within a trial
Abrini’s protests did not come in the context of the current criminal trial, but during a hearing before a Brussels court summary judge hearing a complaint from him – with five other detained defendants – about daily transfers.
The complaint is addressed to the Belgian Minister of Justice. This dispute, which gives rise to a trial in the trial, will be decided “no later than December 30, perhaps earlier,” the magistrate announced at the end of the hearing.
Specifically, six of the nine defendants who appeared in court (a tenth was tried in absentia) denounced having been subjected to “humiliating” treatment, mainly due to the obligation to undress every day in front of three policemen in charge of verifying that they do not hide a dangerous object in your private parts.
Among these complainants is Salah Abdeslam, who was absent on Friday morning, while Abrini and four other defendants took the opportunity to speak out to reiterate their complaints. The civil hearing was organized in the Justitia building in the secure room where the Criminal Court is located.
Salah Abdeslam among the plaintiffs
During these strip searches, “they talk to us like dogs,” protested Tunisian Sofien Ayari, Abdeslam’s partner on the run.
“We constantly humiliate them, it makes it impossible to have a calm debate,” Stanislas Eskenazi, Mohamed Abrini’s lawyer, summed up before journalists.
Delphine Paci, who defends Salah Abdeslam, attacked the “systematic” nature of these excavations. According to her, the measure should be implemented only after “an individual decision” by the prison management that motivates its need “with precise clues.”
On the contrary, Me Bernard Renson, for the Belgian State, defended a practice “by no means disproportionate”, capable of limiting any risk of aggression or even flight during the transfer.
“The potential danger exists with each transfer, which explains these repeated measures,” argued the lawyer, “any object can be used as a weapon, even plastic cutlery or a toothbrush.”
Source: BFM TV
