Court acquits Amsterdam suspect in 2015 Paris, Brussels attacks

A Rotterdam court acquitted 33-year-old Annas A. on Wednesday for his alleged role in the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. A., who is from Amsterdam, was suspected of being a middleman who helped supply weapons that were used in the attacks in 2015 in Paris, and also at the 2016 Brussels Airport bombing in Zaventem. The evidence against A. was insufficient, and not convincing enough to justify a conviction, the court ruled.

At the brief hearing it soon became apparent that a potential acquittal was in line with expectations. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) had already informed the court and the defense in advance that their office would request an acquittal. The court issued its ruling immediately.

A. was suspected of assisting the attackers, or providing them information from September 1 to December 1, 2015, about where they could buy weapons in Rotterdam. But that allegation was only based on one statement that the weapons had come from the Netherlands. That is not enough for the OM, the prosecutor said.

However, the OM did establish that A. exchanged text messages with his Belgian cousin Ali el H., who allegedly supplied the weapons to the terror cell that committed the attacks. In their text conversation, they talked about three “clios” that were ready. According to A. and his cousin, this was a reference to soft drugs. A. was accused of providing his cousin with an address and a telephone number for the trade.

The Public Prosecution Service said it is clear that the two were not talking about the Renault car model of the same name. But it cannot be proven that “clios” referred to assault rifles used by the attackers in Paris and Brussels, nor that an arms dealer was active at the address at that time.

A. has been free from custody since June 2019. He was not present at the hearing. His nephew was sentenced in France last June to a 10-year prison term for participating in the terrorist organization blamed for the Paris attacks.

The prosecutor considered it to be a “complex very exceptional case” that required a great deal of investigative research. “We worked very hard, but because we had to look back in time, not all of the data was still available.” For example, the Public Prosecution Service no longer could acquire relevant telecom data.

Some 130 people were killed in the attacks at several locations in Paris on November 13 - 14, 2015. The most deadly assault was the attack in the Bataclan concert hall, in which a total of 90 people died.

One of the attackers allegedly told another person that he had collected the weapons from the Netherlands. He blew himself up when he used a suicide bomb during the March 22, 2016, attack at the Brussels Airport, which coordinated with other bombings at the airport and on the metro there.

The Brussels bombings left 32 people dead, and hundreds others were injured.