In 2014, four people were shot dead at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. Now it is clear: the guilty Frenchman must go to prison for life. It was the first attack in Europe attributed to IS.
In the process following the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Frenchman Mehdi Nemmouche has been sentenced to life imprisonment. A court in the Belgian capital announced the sentence in the late evening after a jury of twelve had found him guilty on all charges last week. Nemmouche’s accomplice Nacer Bendrer, who had provided weapons for the attack, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The attack on 24 May 2014 in the Jewish Museum in the center of Brussels shot dead an Israeli tourist couple, a Frenchwoman and a Belgian. Less than a week later investigators Nemmouche arrested in southern France. He was later delivered to Belgium. During his arrest Nemmouche had among other things a Kalashnikov here, which was wrapped in the flag of the terrorist group ISIS, which is now called only „Islamic State“ (IS). According to the investigators, he previously fought in Syria.
Defendants had denied act
Nemmouche and Bendrer had denied the act. The defense did not want the jury to believe the version of the defense that her client was the innocent victim of an Iranian-Lebanese intelligence plot. They assumed that the now 33-year-old Syrian returnee committed the act on behalf of the terrorist militia „Islamic State“.
The attack on the Jewish Museum had caused international horror. It was the starting point of a whole series of attacks in Europe where there was an IS reference or the IS reclaimed itself.
