Brussels: Belgium's prosecutor's office on Thursday said Salah Abdeslam, a Frenchman convicted of a 2015 jihadist massacre in Paris, should be found guilty as "co-perpetrator" of the 2016 bomb attacks in Brussels.
"He knowingly helped the cell" that carried out the attacks at Brussels' airport and a metro station on March 22, 2016 that killed 32 people, prosecutor Paule Somers told a court trying Abdeslam and eight other defendants.
As such, he should be convicted accordingly, despite being arrested four days before they were carried out, the prosecutor said.
"There is no need to know the details, the date and the specific target to be co-perpetrator of a terrorist attack," Somers argued.
He pointed to the fact that Abdeslam had turned to members of the Brussels cell to hide him after he fled France in the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people.
That "clandestine" period up to his arrest showed he was part of the preparations for the Brussels attacks, Somers said.
"All the group was cooped up, gathering weapons, going over targets, and Abdeslam was not at all kept out of that," he said.
The sole surviving member of the Paris jihadist cell, Abdeslam denies involvement in the Brussels attacks.
The 33-year-old has already been convicted and sentenced to life in prison in France for the Paris attacks.
If found guilty in Belgium, he could face another life sentence.
