40 years after the infamous 'Bommeleeër' bomb attacks, and over a decade after the main trial began, the case has still not concluded. Before the proceedings against main suspects Marc Scheer and Jos Wilmes can continue, the court must first rule on whether several former senior officers made false testimonies in the initial trial.
After 12 days of trial, in February the court sentenced former police director general Pierre Reuland to three years in prison, fully suspended, and a fine of €5,000 for making false statements.
The three other former high-ranking gendarmerie officers, Aloyse Harpes, Guy Stebens, and Armand Schockweiler, were acquitted. The same applies to the former member of the mobile brigade, Marcel Weydert, and the former Sûreté publique official, Guillaume Büchler. The case against Paul Haan was handled separately due to his health condition.
Both Reuland and the prosecutor's office appealed the verdict. The prosecutor's office did not agree with the sentence for Reuland nor with the acquittals of the three other former gendarmerie officers. Weydert and Büchler will therefore no longer be part of this appeal process.
In the first trial, the defence argued that after decades it was increasingly difficult to reconstruct the truth accurately. Different dates, names, or memories of meetings were not automatically proof that a false statement had been made. "Fundamentally, no false testimony was given here in order to somehow mislead a court", lawyer Georges Pierret said at the time.
The lawyers also criticised the investigating judges' work and the quality of the investigation from the 1980s. Lawyer Benoît Entringer said that while the defence had pointed out shortcomings in the work of the judiciary and the police, it had not been able to prove that the officers had sabotaged the investigation or the instruction.
Roland Assa, Reuland's lawyer, spoke of his client as a "farmer victim" after his conviction. After almost 40 years of investigation, he believed it was to be expected that nothing would come of it in the end.
The appeal process is currently scheduled to have five days of hearings until 10 November. The bombings themselves are still not the subject of this appeal process. The series of around 20 attacks between 1984 and 1986 has not been solved to this day.
