This week in Brussels, Jean-Philippe Mayence, attorney for the victims and relatives of the 2016 terror attack in Brussels, spoke on behalf of his clients in the continuing trial of the surviving terrorists. He directed most of his ire and indignation at defendant Salah Abdeslam, who also participated in the 2015 attacks in Paris.
The below article from today's French-language Belgian daily, La Libre, is translated by Fousesquwk.
Attorney Mayence without filter to Salah Abdeslam: "You are a murderer and you will still be a murderer when you leave here".
The tenor of the Charleroi bar held back nothing in characterizing the principal defendants.
Posted June 15, 2023 at 12:14-Updated June 15, 2023 at 12:49.
"You were a murderer, you are a murderer, and you will still be a murderer when you leave here," said Attorney Jean-Philippe Mayence, civil party lawyer to Salah Abdeslam Thursday morning in the criminal court of Brussels in the trial of the March 22, 2016 attacks. The tenor of Charleroi held nothing back in characterizing the principal defendants: Killers whose "desire for destruction goes beyond the intention to kill and goes so far as to punish the Belgian people, to shed as much blood as possible..."
The lawyer particularly attacked Salah Abdeslam, whom he called a murderer several times, trying to ridicule his line of defense.
"You are nothing to them, you represent nothing," Attorney Mayence pleaded to the jurors. "They make little signs in the box, they laugh...But from time to time, they rebel," he said sardonically, alluding to the complaints of the defendants at the beginning of the trial, on the subject of their transfer conditions from the prison to the Palace of Justice." But you will tell them the price to pay when they have pledged alliance to terrorism," he continued.
"Especially don't forget the exceptional nature of this trial, do not forget that their desire of destruction goes beyond the intention to kill and goes as far as to punish the Belgian people, to shed as much blood as possible. Apply the rules that they do not respect," he stated, affirming that, "they all participated in the attacks in Paris, and that did not prevent them from doing it again."
The freewheeling jurist was particularly angry with Salah Abdeslam, whom he characterized as "the media leader in the business of terrorism". "You were a murderer, you are a murderer, and you will still be a murderer when you leave here," he told him bluntly. "What an unpleasant attitude! He is here as if he were at an outdoor cafe. He enters and leaves the box, he laughs, he argues," he (Mayence) said to cast a negative light on the image of the responsible individual that this defendant tries to give.
For Attorney Mayence, Salah Abdeslam knew that he was participating in a new terrorist act when he returned to Brussels after having participated with the armed commandos in the Paris attacks. He went from hideout to hideout, which proves that he had the desire to rejoin an "operational cell."
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