The greatest criminal trial in Belgian history came to a close on Friday as eight men were given terms of up to life in prison for the 2016 Islamist bombings in Brussels.
The Islamic State organization claimed responsibility for the March 22, 2016, suicide bombings at Brussels’ main airport and on the metro system, which left 32 people dead.
Salah Abdeslam, a French citizen, and Mohamed Abrini, a Belgian-Moroccan, who had already been given a life sentence by France for a massacre in Paris in 2015, were the two most well-known of the six people who had been found guilty of murder in July.
Abrini, one of the predetermined bombers who ultimately opted against detonating himself, received a 30-year prison sentence.
The court decided against giving Abdeslam an additional sentence after he received a 20-year sentence in Belgium in 2018 for a gunfight.
The bombs, which were close to the NATO and EU headquarters, were a part of a wave of assaults in Europe that the Islamic State organization claimed responsibility for.
The largest peacetime attack in Belgium left hundreds of passengers and transportation workers crippled, and seven years later, many victims, families, and rescuers are still traumatized.
After discovering a connection between the trauma sustained and the subsequent deaths of three more persons, authorities later increased the official death toll from the attacks to 35.
Over the course of several months of proceedings, dozens of injured survivors and grieving family members offered moving testimony.
