The primary suspect in the 2016 bombings in Brussels—an attack carried out by Islamic State militants that saw 32 people lose their lives and over 300 more injured—has claimed to have had no prior knowledge of the terror plot.
33-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who presently is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for his role in the Paris terror attacks of November 2015, is one of ten men presently being tried in the Belgian capital. Six of the ten defendants have already been found guilty of involvement in the Paris attacks, which left 130 dead and 416 injured, 100 of them critically.
He faced his first day of cross-examination on Wednesday, April 5th, during which he not only claimed that his “presence in the dock was unjustified” but accused the court of “trying to make an example of [him].”
“I was not aware of anything,” he insisted, before going on to argue there is no way he could have been involved in the planning of the Brussels attack, claiming that the terrorists had planned the attack, which took place on March 22nd, following his arrest on March 18th.
“I was not aware of anything,” he insisted.
38-year-old Mohamed Abrini, Abdeslam’s childhood friend and co-defendant, also took the stand, and like Abdeslam, minimized the role he played in the deadly terrorist attack. Abrini, the only surviving member of the four-man suicide bombing team, apparently backed out at the last minute according to CCTV footage, choosing not to detonate his bomb.
The other three attackers, Najim Laachraoui, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, and Khalid El Bakraoui, went through with their suicide bombings, with the former two detonating their explosives in Brussels airport while the latter blew himself up at the Maalbeek metro station.
While speaking to the court, Abrini, already serving a life sentence with no opportunity of parole before 22 years served, claimed: “They’re trying to pin this all on us. Just like in Paris, they’ll convict for what others did.”
He insisted that those on trial in Belgium were “not the tip of the pyramid,” telling the court that authorities “never caught those pulling the strings.” But, he continued, “you have to trot out someone, and that someone is us.”
In the coming weeks, the court will ask defendants to provide their version of the events that led up to the attack and the day of the attack itself.