Mehdi Nemmouche was convicted last week of"terrorist murder" for the anti-Semitic gun rampage in the Belgian capital in May 2014, a crime committed following his return from Syria's battlefields.
He was found to have killed the four victims in less than 90 seconds, shooting them with a handgun and a Kalashnikov rifle with what one paramedic who attended the scene called “surgical” precision. “Mr Nemmouche, you are just a coward, you kill people by shooting them from behind, you kill old women by shooting them with an assault rifle, you kill because it gives you pleasure to kill,” prosecutor Yves Moreau had said.
Bendrer, who is also French, said he was ashamed that he had ever met Nemmouche, saying “he’s not even a man, he’s a monster”.The investigation showed that the two men had dozens of telephone conversations in April 2014, when Nemmouche was preparing for the killings.