The policeman who is thought to have delayed sending information to the federal police anti-terrorism cell, about the Jewish Museum attack, will appear before the Brussels Court of Appeal on October 30th.
The man had been sentenced, in October 2015, by the Brussels Criminal Court to a two-month suspended prison sentence but had appealed this decision.
After the attack, committed on May 24th, 2014 at the Jewish Museum which took the lives of four individuals, the Brussels courts had disseminated pictures of the incident.
During the days following this dissemination, a member of the federal Brussels police received information. The individual who gave him the information recognised the Kalashnikov seen on the pictures as being a weapon which had just been purchased in the “criminal underworld.”
The policeman was ordered by a superior office to immediately write a confidential report on this matter. He delayed in doing so, with the consequence that the Brussels police anti-terrorist cell was not aware of the information.
Mehdi Nemmouche, the presumed perpetrator of the attack, in the meantime succeeded in fleeing for France. It thereafter appeared that the information had not concerned the weapon used during the attack. However, the Public Prosecutor's Office nevertheless took the decision to prosecute the policeman who received it.
As mentioned above in October 2015, the Brussels Criminal Court sentenced the policeman to a suspended prison sentence but his lawyers, Me Sven De Baere et Sven Mary, had immediately announced that they would then appeal the decision.
The Brussels Times
