Jury to be chosen for Brussels Jewish museum terror attack trial
MATTHIEU DEMEESTERE
Mehdi Nemmouche suspected in 2014 shooting that killed four people, including 2 Israelis; Jewish leader warns defense team may claim Mossad behind killing spree
This court drawing made on June 26, 2014, shows Mehdi Nemmouche, center, the suspect in a deadly terror attack at the Brussels Jewish Museum, during a court hearing in Versailles, France. (AFP Photo/Benoit Peyrucq)
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — A jury will be chosen on Monday for the trial of a Frenchman accused of shooting dead four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014 following his return from Syria.
Mehdi Nemmouche, allegedly the first battle-hardened jihadist to stage a terror attack on European soil, goes on trial Thursday for his killing spree in the Belgian capital on May 24, 2014.
Both Nemmouche, 33, and Nacer Bendrer, a fellow Frenchman aged 30 who allegedly supplied the weapons, claim they are innocent.
The pair will appear at a Brussels criminal court at 9:00 a.m. local time when the process of selecting the 12-member jury begins.
The full trial will open three days later, with the two facing charges of “terrorist murder,” which carries a life sentence.
More than 100 witnesses are to testify at the trial, which will be attended by the victims’ families and Jewish community leaders who have denounced the anti-Semitic nature of the attack.
People pay their respects in front of a makeshift memorial at the entrance of the Jewish Museum in Brussels, on May 25, 2014. (AFP/Georges Gobet)
And more than 300 Belgian and foreign journalists have registered to cover the proceedings which could last until the end of February.
82 seconds of terror
The deadly attack, which lasted only 82 seconds, took place on a Saturday afternoon, in a shooting that shocked Belgium and the world.
Firing a pistol and then an assault rifle, the gunman killed two Israeli tourists, a French volunteer and a Belgian receptionist at the Jewish Museum.
Nemmouche — born to a family of Algerian origin in the northern French town of Roubaix but immediately put into foster care — was arrested six days after the attack.
He was caught in the southern French port city of Marseille after arriving on a bus from Brussels. In his possession was a handgun and an assault rifle.
Prior to the attack, Nemmouche is said to have fought in Syria as part of a jihadist faction and is also accused of acting as a jailer of kidnapped French journalists.
Investigators say Nemmouche was in Syria from 2013 to 2014 which was where he met Najim Laachraoui, a member of the gang which went on to carry out the Brussels suicide bombings that killed 32 people in March 2016.
French national Mehdi Nemmouche, right, sits in the back of a police vehicle as he arrives at the courthouse in Brussels on December 20, 2018, for a preliminary hearing in his trial for killing four people in a terror attack at the city’s Jewish Museum . (Thierry Roge/Belga/AFP)
Radicalized inmates
That same Brussels cell is also alleged to have coordinated and sent jihadists to carry out the Paris massacre of November 13, 2015, in which 130 people were killed and hundreds more wounded.
Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, whose activities in Syria and Iraq lured thousands of jihadists from Europe.
Nemmouche and Bendrer, investigators say, met nearly a decade ago while serving time in a prison in Salon-de-Provence, southern France, where they were both described as “radicalized” inmates who tried to win others over.
Bendrer was arrested in Marseille seven months after the Jewish Museum attack and charged as Nemmouche’s accomplice.
Although he was jailed for five years in September by a French court for attempted extortion, he was transferred to Belgium for the trial.
Jailer of hostages
Nemmouche is expected to face a separate trial in France for holding French journalists hostage in Syria after being charged in November.
The former hostages are expected to testify about Nemmouche’s character during the Brussels trial, despite the defense arguing that theirs is a separate case.
Lawyers for Mehdi Nemmouche, a French suspect in the Brussels Jewish museum attack, Henri Laquay, center, and Sebastien Courtoy, right, speak with the media at the Palace of Justice in Brussels on Thursday, September 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Nemmouche is said to have voiced admiration for Mohamed Merah, who murdered a Jewish father, his two children and an eight-year-old girl in a 2012 attack on a Jewish school in the southern French city of Toulouse.
Belgian Jewish leader Yohan Benizri told AFP he feared Nemmouche’s lawyers Sebastien Courtoy and Henri Laquay will try to “play down” the anti-Semitic nature of the museum attack.
The defense team, Benizri added, may even try to “twist” the facts by repeating “totally far-fetched” claims that Israel’s intelligence service Mossad staged the attack.
“We don’t want Mehdi Nemmouche to become a star. He is a terrorist,” said Benizri, who heads the Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations.
Courtoy himself suggested Israeli agents could be behind the attack when he spoke at a pre-trial hearing on December 20.
“There was the same kind of talk in conspiracy and anti-Semitic circles after the September 11 attacks in the United States,” Benizri warned.