A Brussels court on Tuesday handed out guilty verdicts to six defendants involved in the 2016 attacks, finding them responsible for "terrorist murder."
The suspects in the case are Mohamed Abrini, Oussama Atar, Osama Krayem, Salah Abdeslam, Ali El Haddad Asufi, and Bilal El Makhoukhi. The defendants were found guilty of terrorist murder in the brutal attacks.
Brussels Court Hands Guilty Verdict to Terror Suspects
The Brussels court established a terrorist motive behind the tragic incident, ruling that the suspect intended to intimidate the Belgian population while killing as many people as possible.
The suspects, alongside Herve Bayingana Muhirwa and Sofien Ayari, were also found guilty of participating in the activities of a terrorist organization. The trial in the case started last year in an attempt to determine whether or not the ten men played a part in the suicide bombings conducted on March 22, 2016.
The attacks led to the deaths of dozens of people and the injury of more than 300 others. Recently, the court found that four more people should be added to the list of people killed in the attacks, which brought the death toll to 36, as per CNN.
Following the attacks, ISIS, a terror organization, claimed responsibility for the incidents where several suicide bombers detonated multiple explosions in Brussels airport and a metro station located within the city.
Abdeslam, in 2022, was also found guilty of carrying out a series of deadly gun and bomb attacks in 2015. The individual, previously believed to be the only surviving member of the group responsible for the French attacks, was handed out a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole by a French court.
On the other hand, Atar, absent from the trial in Brussels, was presumed to have been killed in Syria. Smail Farisi and Ibrahim Farisi, brothers, were both acquitted of the charge of participation in the activities of a terrorist group. They were consequently found not guilty of all charges against them.
Horrific Suicide Bombings
A few days before the Brussels bombings, 33-year-old Abdeslam was arrested and found to have fled Paris for Belgium following the 2015 attacks. He also denied any involvement in the bombings that occurred four months later. But the Brussels court has convicted him of murder and attempted murder, according to BBC.
Abrini was previously identified on CCTV fleeing Zaventem airport when his explosives did not go off as he had planned. He later became known as the "man in the hat." Unlike Abdeslam, Abrini acknowledged his responsibility for the attacks and confessed to preparing the explosives for the incidents.
In her closing remark, the president of the Brussels court of assizes, Laurence Massart, recalled the devastation that the assailants caused. The attacks placed the country on edge and affected people from nearly a dozen nations.
The judge handling the case described how two clasts tore through the check-in area at the airport, causing the death of 15 people, injuring hundreds of others, and causing what they described as "untold chaos," said The Guardian.