Paris defence lawyers attack Belgian police evidence as 'confused approximation'

The second day of Belgian police evidence at the Paris terror trial was very similar to Tuesday's opening of this chapter on the preparations for the attacks, especially in the combination of DNA evidence suggesting the presence of several of the accused at addresses where home-made explosives were clearly manipulated.

A police officer stands guard outside the Bataclan theatre in Paris on November 18, 2015. Three men were arrested during a police assault in Paris targeting the suspected mastermind of November 13's attacks, police said. AFP PHOTO / DOMINIQUE FAGET (Photo by DOMINIQUE FAGET / AFP) AFP - DOMINIQUE FAGET

The voice and the silhouette were different. Wednesday's evidence from an anonymous Belgian police investigator, relayed live by videolink from Brussels, was delivered by a woman.

In September 2015, Mohamed Bakkali rented a studio on the ninth floor of a building in Jette, a north-eastern suburb of the Belgian capital.

Physical evidence

Traces of explosives were found there when the police examined the apartment in March 2016. As was DNA evidence suggesting the studio had been visited by Mohamed Abrini, Salah Abdeslam, Sofien Ayari, Osama Krayem, Bilal Hadfi, Samy Amimour and Mohamed Belkaïd, all either in the prisoners' box at this Paris trial, or dead in the course or aftermath of the attacks on 13 November 2015.

More traces of explosives were found in a car garage rented by Khalid El Bakraoui, who is suspected of having been implicated in the planning of the Paris attacks, and who himself died in the 2016 Brussels bombings. Apart from the texplosives, the garage contained a sack of steel bolts.

Ibrahim El Bakraoui, the brother of Khalid, and who died like him in the 2016 Brussels attacks, had a hide-out on the seventh floor of a building in Etterbeek, a Brussels suburb. The apartment was rented by Ali El Haddad Asufi, another of the accused in the Paris trial.

On the basis of video evidence from security cameras, Belgian police were able to confirm visits to this apartment by Mohamed Bakkali, Asufi himself, and by Khalid El Bakraoui. Traces of the DNA of Osama Krayem, another of the Paris accused, were also found at the same address.

'Confusion' and 'approximation'

As on Tuesday, several of the defence lawyers were aggressive in their efforts to deflate the Belgian evidence.

The witness was accused of "confusion", "approximation", of "prejudice", of "jumping to conclusions".

She was, for example, unable to say whether the traces of explosives found in the Jette apartment and in the garage, investigated by police experts in March 2016, were from suicide vests used in the Paris attacks or from the subsequent Brussels bombings.

She told the court that she had made an effort to present the evidence as it had been established. "I stand by what I have said. It is not my job to draw conclusions."

The trial continues.