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Thursday, 10 December 2015 - 09:08
Court to rule on nine jihad suspects today
The nine suspects in the large jihad trial will hear the court's verdict on Thursday. The Public Prosecutor demanded years long prison sentences against all of the suspects. They are suspected of offenses raging from inciting hatred to recruitment for the terrorist organizations fighting in the Syrian Civil War, all in a very organized manner, according to the Prosecutor, NOS reports.
Whether the Prosecutor will get the demanded sentences remains the question. Since the start of the trial, all but one suspect have been released. Only the main suspect Azzedine C. is still in custody. The Prosecutor also had to drop the harshest charge - recruitment - against all the suspects, according to the broadcaster. They are still suspected of recruitment as a group, but no longer individually. And even as a group, there is not a lot of evidence.
Though it is the court's duty to look only at the case in front of it, there are a number of outside factors that may influence the ruling, even if only subconsciously. This includes the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th, a number of hostages being beheaded by terrorist organization ISIS and societal and political pressure to fight jihadism.
Azzedine C.'s lawyer, Andre Seebregts, does not know what to expect. "It can go either way", he said to newspaper AD. "On the one hand, everyone except Azzedine has been released. On the other hand, there are high sentence demands and the attacks in Paris and the U.S. We do not know what impact that will have.
Here follows a list of the suspects and the Prosecutor's sentence demand against them:
- Azzedine C., 33 years old, alias Abou Moussa - 7 year prison sentence
- Rudolph H., 25 years old, alias Suhayb - 6 years in prison
- Oussama C., 19 years old, alias Aboy Yazeed - 5 years prison sentence.
- Moussa L., 41 years old - 30 months in prison, 10 conditionally suspended
- Imane B., 26 years old - 2 years prison sentence
- Hicham el O., 30 years old - 4 years in prison
- Jordi de J., 22 years old - 3 years in prison, one of which conditionally suspended
- Anis Z., 24 years old - 5 years in prison. He is currently still in Syria.
- Hatim R., 25 years old - 6 years in prison. He is currently in Syria.