Dozens jailed in Belgium drug smuggling mega-trial

BRUSSELS:

A Belgian court jailed dozens of people Tuesday in one of the country's biggest ever drug trials, with ringleaders sentenced to up to 17 years behind bars.

More than 120 defendants from Belgium, Albania, Colombia and North Africa were accused of having participated in a multinational cocaine and cannabis trafficking enterprise after investigators cracked encrypted messaging apps.

Judges issued sentences totalling more than 700 years in a case that shone a spotlight on Belgium's role as Europe's gateway for drugs.

Only nine of the accused were acquitted. Dozens of others received prison terms ranging from a few months to more than 15 years.

"It is an extremely harsh judgment," Gilles Vanderbeck, a lawyer representing one of the alleged ringleaders, told AFP, noting the low number of exonerations and suspended sentences.

His client, Algerian Abdelwahab Guerni, was jailed for 17 years.

Guerni, a tall bald man, was among two dozen defendants who were led in handcuffs into a courtroom in the former headquarters of military alliance NATO in Brussels.

Other accused who had been bailed pending the trial, sat in court to await their fate.

Albanian citizen Eridan Munoz Guerrero, another suspected leader, received a 14-year term.

The trafficking ring -- active from 2017 to late 2022 -- involved numerous criminal gangs and was dismantled following raids by police in Belgium, Germany and Italy.

Prosecutors had asked for jail terms of up to 20 years for some of the accused.

They said drugs were transported in containers from South America and Morocco and smuggled through ports in Belgium, notably the giant port of Antwerp, as well as The Netherlands, Germany and France before being sold across Europe.