Belgian Court Bans ’Illegal’ Body Searches of Brussels Attack Suspects

The Belgian justice has ruled in favor of six of the nine accused of the Brussels attacks who had denounced these bodily searches, contrary to the texts, and has therefore ordered the Belgian State to "put an end" to these practices carried out by the judicial police officers during the transfers between the remand prison and the courthouse.

The trial of the 2016 Brussels attacks that occurred in the metro and the airport of the Belgian capital opened in December last year. The nine accused, including Salah Abdeslam, had already been convicted in France for the Paris attacks. Several of them reported humiliating and degrading treatments during the police searches during their transfer from prison to the courthouse. Due to these searches touching their intimate parts, Abdeslam refused to be transferred, which led the judge to postpone the hearing.

On December 29 last, the court of first instance ruled that these practices constitute "a degrading act" and as such, violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). But the Belgian State appealed the conviction and continued these practices for security reasons, citing a "potential risk" at each transfer of an accused. The court recognized that Belgian law does provide for intimate searches, but does not admit that this type of search be "systematic", calling for the taking of "measures to preserve the modesty of prisoners".

Thus, the Belgian judicial police will now have to pay a fine of at least 1,000 euros and up to 25,000 euros per person and per day, if it carries out systematic strip searches and on the knees again, specifying that these searches must be justified by "serious reasons" of a risk of attack or escape.