Brussels Criminal Court: judgment due to be given on weapons trafficker

The 47th division of the Brussels Criminal Court was due to pronounce its judgment on Jacques Monsieur today (Thursday) at 9 a.m. He is a notorious weapons trafficker, already sentenced on multiple occasions both in Belgium and abroad.
In the present case, the defendant was prosecuted for the sale of illegal arms headed for Libya, Chad, Pakistan and Iran. Monsieur, a Belgian aged 64, was accused before the Brussels Criminal Court of weapons trafficking.

Originally from Lot, and nicknamed “The Fox” or “The Marshal”, the man is particularly infamous for having been sentenced in the United States (US) in 2010 in the case connected to Iran-Contra Affair. This involved the sale of arms to Iran in the 1990s to armed rebel groups. These were, in particular, Bosnian and Croatian forces in the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.

The Federal Prosecutor is accusing Jacques Monsieur of having been involved between 2006 and 2009, in the illegal sale of automatic rifles, tanks, helicopters, aeroplanes and other military equipment This was headed for Libya, Chad, Pakistan and Iran.

The Federal Prosecutor States that the accused’s involvement in arms trafficking clearly emerges from numerous e-mail exchanges that the police discovered on his computer. The Prosecutor is seeking a two-year prison sentence.

The accused maintains that he has not sold weapons since the beginning of the millennium. However, former acquaintances in the field regularly got in touch with him again. Occasionally he helped them.

His barrister says that there is no proof that his client played a role in weapons trafficking.


The Brussels Times


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