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Brussels has witnessed justice served by a Belgian court to the eight men charged with the terrorist bombing attacks in the city in 2016, marking an end to the country’s largest-ever criminal trial, as all were handed sentences of up to life in jail.

On 22 March 2016, Brussels’ main airport and the metro system were attacked in a bombing claimed by ISIS,  leaving 35 people killed.

Among the six defendants were French citizen Salah Abdeslam and Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Abrini, who were already sentenced to life in prison for a 2015 massacre in Paris.

Abrini, who decided at the last moment not to blow himself up, was given 30 years, and the court did not hand Abdelslam another term after being sentenced in Belgium to 20 years in 2018 for a shootout incident.

During the months of hearing, dozens of survivors and grieving relatives provided evidence and emotional testimonies, and the trial, which began at the end of last year, was conducted under tight security at the former headquarters of NATO in the city.

Belgian nationalities unrevoked

Abdeslam is the only surviving culprit of the 2015 Paris attacks that caused the death of 130 people, after which he fled to Brussels and went into hiding for four months in an apartment with members of the local cell.

Abdeslam was arrested days before the Brussels bombings, but the jury decided he was one of the co-conspirators, while a Belgian court denied his request to stay in the country to execute his sentence and eventually go back to France to serve it. 

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Abrini, on the other hand, was guilty of being one of the suicide bombers who targeted Brussels’ airport and a metro station. He later testified that he decided at the last minute not to detonate the bomb at the airport - the same testimony given by another defendant, Osama Krayem, who is Swedish but of Syrian descent.

Krayem, alongside Bilal El Makhoukhi and Oussama Atar, was given life sentences. Atar, who was a senior commander in ISIS who headed the cell, was tried in absentia because he was presumed to have died in Syria in 2017.

Found guilty of “participating in the activities of a terrorist group”, Herve Bayingana Muhirwa was handed a sentence of 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, Tunisian Sofien Ayari was not given additional jail time since the court ruled sentences in previous cases were enough.

In addition, the court ruled that they would not withdraw the Belgian nationalities from the culprits.