In November 2015, IS supporters killed 130 people in several terrorist attacks in Paris. After the main defendant, Salah Abdeslam, was sentenced to life imprisonment, the trials in Belgium also ended with numerous guilty verdicts against helpers and accomplices of the Paris attackers.
A day after the verdicts in the trial of the Paris terrorist attacks of 2015, numerous accomplices of the perpetrators were convicted in Belgium. A Belgian court handed down, among other things, a three-year suspended prison sentence on Abid Aberkane. He had helped his cousin Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the Paris attack, to escape from the police, hidden him in Brussels and provided him with food.
A total of 14 alleged accomplices were charged, including a woman. Four of them were acquitted, one accused was sentenced to community service. Two others were tried in absentia. Authorities presume they are dead after traveling to Iraq or Syria to fight. Other defendants were sentenced to up to 30 months in prison.
The verdicts were comparatively mild. Prosecutors had asked for prison sentences of up to five years. The defendants had been accused of having supported the Paris bombers before or after the attacks in the French capital, mostly from Belgium. For example, they are said to have been their drivers, provided them with accommodation or obtained false documents.
The majority of the accused were close to Salah Abdeslam. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in Paris on Wednesday without the possibility of early release. The court found him guilty of complicity in “murders linked to a terrorist organization”. On November 13, 2015, the Islamist attackers killed a total of 130 people in attacks in the Bataclan concert hall, in Parisian street cafes and at the Stade de France.
