Trial of the Brussels attacks: systematic searches prohibited
The defendants in the trial for the 2016 Brussels jihadist attacks will no longer be able to undergo systematic searches, a council chamber judge decided on Thursday 29 December, ordering the Belgian state to cease this practice at the center of a dispute that had led to the postponement of interrogations.
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| Lawyers talk to their clients sitting in the defendants’ box, at the start of a hearing in the trial for the 22 March 2016 attacks, at the Brussels-Capital Assize Court, in Brussels, December 12. |
| Photo: AFP/VNA/CVN |
Six of the nine detained defendants who appeared at the hearings filed a lawsuit against their conditions of transfer from prison to the court, a procedure that upset the timing of the trial, the work of which began in early December.
These defendants, including Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini, complained that they had been subjected to “humiliating”due to the obligation to kneel naked every day in front of three police officers in charge of verifying that they are not hiding any dangerous objects in their private parts.
The Chamber of Arbitration of the Court of First Instance of Brussels estimated on Thursday that the “Systematic practice of body searches with genuflections (…) appears to constitute prohibited degrading treatment” by the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “degrading treatment at all times and under all circumstances”.
The magistrate noted “the general and systematic character” body searches and the fact that they “they are destined to repeat themselves daily in the hearing days of a trial scheduled for a long time”. He also considered them insufficiently justified “from a security imperative, over and above many other existing security measures”.
Consequently, the private judge orders the Belgian State, on a provisional basis, “to put an end to this practice” under penalty of a fine of 1,000 euros per infringement, per appellant.
This decision is immediately enforceable, notwithstanding any recourse that the State may make.
On the other hand, the judge held that wearing a “blackout mask” imposed on the defendants during their transfer did not consist “degrading treatment” and it was “justified by security imperatives”.
The complaint of the six defendants, which targeted the Belgian Minister of Justice, was part of the trial for the suicide bombings of 22 March 2016, claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group and which had caused 32 deaths and several hundred injured in the airport and in the Brussels metro.
AFP/VNA/CVN
