The 90th Chamber of the Brussels Correctional Court on Tuesday set the 18th of December as the start date for the trial of terror suspects Salah Abdeslam and Sofiane Ayari. According to the Office of the Public Prosecutor, Abdeslam, detained in France, has said that he wishes to attend his trial in Brussels. Abdeslam and Ayari are accused of attempted murder in a terrorist context for having fired on French and Belgian police officers in Forest on 15 March 2016 as they prepared to search the house in which they were hiding. At the time, Abdeslam had been on the sought by police for months, suspected of being one of the authors of the November 2015 attacks in Paris and the only one still alive. He and Ayari were finally arrested on 18 March 2016 at the Rue des Quatre Vents, a street in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean.
The trial of Abdeslam, who is detained in France in connection with the investigation into the Paris attacks, will be held in stages in Brussels between 18 and 22 December 2017.
Meanwhile, one of the collaborators of Sven Mary, the former Belgian lawyer of Abdeslam, told the court on Tuesday that Mary had had no instructions from the suspect.
The Brussels Times
