BRUSSELS — Belgium on Tuesday opened a trial of 14 people alleged to have assisted terrorists who carried out deadly bomb and gun attacks in Paris in 2015.
اضافة اعلان
Proceedings
began under high security in NATO’s former headquarters and are expected to
last until May 20, with a verdict likely to take several more weeks.
The hearings
were happening in parallel with a trial in Paris of 20 suspects charged in
France in connection with the same killing spree. That trial opened in
September and is expected to run until the end of June.
The November
2015 Paris attacks saw 130 people killed, with the terror group Daesh claiming
responsibility.
Assailants set
off suicide belts outside the Stade de France stadium, as a group of gunmen in
a car cut down people outside restaurants and bars. Three jihadists then killed
90 people attending a performance at Paris’s popular Bataclan music venue.
Part of the
attack was planned in Belgium, according to prosecutors.
The 14 accused
in the Belgian trial — 13 men and one woman — are suspected of transporting,
housing, or financially helping some of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks.
Charges include
driving an alleged attacker to the airport for a trip to Syria.
Two of the
suspects, both Belgians, are being tried in absentia. They are believed to have
died in Syria.
Some of the
suspects are close to Salah Abdeslam, a 32-year-old French national who is the
only surviving suspected assailant after failing to set off his bomb belt.
Abdeslam is on trial in Paris.
Prosecutors
allege they had knowledge of the terrorist group’s intentions, or helped
Abdeslam — who was living in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek — go to
ground in the four months following the attacks that he was a fugitive.
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