Brussels’ judicial bodies are gearing up for another busy year, with a host of cases slated from September 2024 to June 2025. They include the Kraainem double murder case, to be tried in January at the Brussels Assizes Court.
The judicial year begins in Brussels on Monday 2 September, with the traditional speeches at the Court of Cassation and the Court of Appeal.
These will be delivered by the newly appointed heads of their respective general prosecutor’s offices, Attorney General Ria Mortier for the Ministry of Justice at the Court of Cassation, and Attorney General Frédéric Van Leeuw for the Ministry of Justice at the Brussels Court of Appeal.
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Judgement day in the Encrochat/SKY case
September 2 is also judgement day in the Encrochat/SKY case, the largest criminal trial ever held in Belgium, involving 124 individuals, four companies, and one unknown person accused of large-scale cocaine and cannabis smuggling and trafficking.
The case emerged following the cracking of the encrypted networks Encrochat and SKY ECC, which led investigators to nine drug labs located in Ixelles, Etterbeek, Uccle, and Forest. In this case, the federal prosecutor has sought prison sentences of up to 20 years.
On 9 and 10 September, the Brussels Court of Appeal will hear a case centred on the fight against racism and discrimination. Five women who fell victim to racial segregation in the Congo in the 1950s and 1960s when it was a Belgian colony, have brought a civil lawsuit against the Belgian State.
Thallium poisoning case
They are seeking a ruling that Belgium conducted, at the time, a violent system of racial discrimination against mixed-race children. The women’s claim was dismissed at the court of first instance, prompting them to appeal.
On 2 October, the court will begin the trial into a mysterious thallium poisoning case from 2021. In this case, a biochemical engineer in his thirties is accused of poisoning his best friend, a man of the same age, by subjecting him for months to the effects of this deadly poison. Since then, the victim has suffered a slow and irreversible degeneration of his nervous system.
In the Assize Court, a number of trials have been scheduled for this new judicial year, including that of a murder committed in 2020, after shots were fired in the street during territorial warfare between drug traffickers.
This type of crime has since multiplied like a plague in the capital, particularly in early 2024. In this case, which begins on 25 September at the Justitia building in Haren, Mohamed-Amine Dardour and two other men will be tried for the murder of Soufiane Benali. The 23-year-old was shot with a machine pistol on the night of 4 to 5 July 2020 at the Place Orban in Forest.
Kraainem murder trial
The court will also try a completely different criminal case much later, in early 2025. It has to do with the murder of a mother and daughter, stabbed to death in their home in Kraainem, Flemish Brabant, on 24 March 2022.
The mother's partner, Pierre Devalet, was accused of masterminding the double murder. Two other individuals, one accused of carrying out the murder and the other to be tried as an accomplice, will appear in the dock alongside Devalet from 10 January.
Two other major cases are due to be tried in the same court in 2025: that of Thaddée Kwitonda, accused of genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and Dylan Duby, accused of having been paid to murder businessman Frank Goes in 2020.
