Belgian court postpones hearing on Mohamed Bakkali's parole to hear victims

The Belgian court responsible for a request for conditional release of the "logistician" of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris will take the time to hear the victims who wish, and the hearing which was scheduled for September 29 will be postponed, the Brussels court announced on Wednesday.\n\nBelgian Mohamed Bakkali was sentenced in 2022 in Paris to 30 years of criminal imprisonment with a two-thirds security sentence for his role in these attacks (130 deaths) claimed by the Islamic State organization.\n\nBut he is serving his sentence in Belgium and, according to Belgian law, is already eligible for parole, which has caused great excitement in France. He has been incarcerated since the end of November 2015 and has spent less than eleven years in prison. The former president of the victims' association Life for Paris expressed his "feeling of betrayal" last week.\n\nSkip advertisement\n\nAlso according to Belgian law, victims who wish can be involved in the terms of execution of a sentence, and be heard behind closed doors by the sentence enforcement court (TAP), recalls the Belgian court in a press release. However, they cannot attend the contradictory debate. Thus, to enable them to assert their rights before the TAP and to be heard, “the hearing of this Tuesday, September 29, 2026 will be postponed,” announces the court.\n\n“A new date will be communicated later, taking into account the time necessary for the material and practical organization of these hearings”, scheduled at least in part by videoconference, it adds. An information session for victims was organized on September 16 in Paris, with several representatives of the Belgian justice system, in collaboration with the French anti-terrorism prosecution.\n\n“An affront to the pain of the victims”\n\nOn Wednesday, the Brussels court said it “regretted” that the victims had only recently been informed of their rights under Belgian legislation. “In fact, such information was proposed in 2024 but the French judicial authorities did not follow up on it,” he assures. “The victims’ distress is therefore perfectly understandable.”\n\nThe French and Belgian Ministers of Justice, Gérald Darmanin and Annelies Verlinden, spoke on the subject on the telephone on Monday. “If a conditional release (of Mohamed Bakkali) were to materialize in the coming months, this would be experienced, in France, as an affront to the pain of the victims,” indicated Gérald Darmanin in a letter reporting on this exchange.\n\nFor her part Annelies Verlinden had insisted on the fact that the TAP would render its decision “in complete autonomy” by virtue of the separation of executive and judicial powers. Mohamed Bakkali, now aged 39, was also sentenced to 25 years in prison for helping the assailant who attempted an attack on the Amsterdam-Paris high-speed train in August 2015. This sentence was absorbed by that concerning November 13.