The Belgian justice orders that the searches with full nude of those accused of the attack in Brussels cease

The Belgian justice has ordered this Monday the end of the exhaustive searches, with full nude included, to which the police submit the defendants of the attacks in Brussels in 2016 every time they are transferred from prison to the court that judges them for causing the death of 32 people and leaving hundreds injured in the worst jihadist attacks in the history of Belgium.

The appeal court has sided with the plaintiffs, including Salah Abdeslam, the jihadist already sentenced to life imprisonment in France for the attacks on November 13, 2015 in Paris and who, since the end of December, has repeatedly refused to appear before Belgian judges in protest against a daily police practice that he described as humiliating and unnecessary.

Every time there is a hearing, an average of four days a week since the end of last year, the agents in charge of their transfer from prison to the special court installed in the former NATO headquarters in the Belgian capital force the seven imprisoned defendants — two others are on probation — to strip completely naked and squat down to check that they are not hiding any dangerous objects.

In addition, they are fitted with darkened glasses that prevent them from seeing anything as soon as they set foot outside the prison.

The controversial procedure, defended by the Belgian judicial police alleging the danger of the detainees, had caused several incidents and delays at the end of last year in a macro process that already started on the wrong foot: it was supposed to start in mid-September, but it did not until beginning of December due to a first demand from the lawyers of the defendants to reform the glass security booth where their defendants sit, which forced them to remain for hours in small isolated cells and with great difficulty to communicate with their defenders in the courtroom .

The courts agreed with them and the cabin had to be transformed, which caused an initial delay of several weeks.

Once the trial finally began, in December,

Several of the defendants refused to appear in protest at the "degrading" searches to which they were subjected.

Six of the seven defendants in prison – all except Osama Krayem, of Swedish origin – went to court.

With this Monday's decision, the defendants add a new small victory: the appeals court has confirmed the sentence of a court of first instance that ordered, on December 29, the end of the "practice of systematic searches with genuflection" of the defendants and threatened a "fine of 1,000 euros for contravention per plaintiff, up to a maximum of 50,000 euros per plaintiff."

Now, the appeals court has once again ruled in the same way in favor of the defendants, although it lowers the maximum fine per defendant to 25,000 euros in the event that they continue to suffer this practice which, he stresses, "is not provided for by the law of the August 5, 1992″, as alleged by the Belgian State, which appealed the initial verdict in January.

Thus,

The decision affects seven of the ten defendants for the suicide attacks against the Brussels airport and a metro station on March 16, 2016 who are in prison awaiting the new sentence.

Most of them, including Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini, the so-called

who did not detonate his explosives at the airport, have already received long prison terms for his involvement in the Paris attacks that occurred a few months earlier.

A tenth accused, Usama Atar, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, is tried in absentia, since the Belgian authorities have not been able to certify his death, announced by the Islamic State in 2019. The Prosecutor's Office has not specified the sentences it requests for the defendants , whom he accuses of murder and attempted murder in the context of a terrorist attack.

The fact that most of the defendants have already been convicted has dampened interest in the new trial.

Added to this are the multiple incidents and delays suffered, which have caused the exasperation of many victims who had already lamented the long time that had elapsed since the attacks until the start of a trial that reopened wounds.

In declarations to the newspaper

the lawyer of one of the associations of victims appearing in the process, V-Europe, expressed his hope that the judicial decision of this Monday put an end to the constant shocks.

"The only thing we are asking for is that this story [of the records] end, that it stop interfering in the court's debates," Guillaume Lys told the Belgian newspaper.

Follow all the international information on

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber