Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting

Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting
The Jewish Museum of Belgium, pictured in 2009
Location	Jewish Museum of Belgium Brussels, Belgium
Date	24 May 2014 (2014-05-24) 15:47 CEST (UTC+02:00)
Attack type	Mass shooting, mass murder, terrorism
Weapons	Zastava M70AB (semi-automatic rifle) Llama Scorpio (.38-caliber revolver)
Deaths	4
Perpetrators	Mehdi Nemmouche Nacer Bendrer (accomplice)
Motive	Islamic extremism, antisemitism
Convictions	Nemmouche: life imprisonment Bendrer: 15 years imprisonment

The Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting was an antisemitic Islamist terrorist attack which took place in Brussels, Belgium, on 24 May 2014 when a gunman opened fire at the museum, killing four people. Three of them, an Israeli couple on holiday and a French woman, died at the scene. The fourth victim, a Belgian employee of the museum, later died of his injuries in hospital. Six days after the attack, on 30 May 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French national of Algerian origin, was arrested during a routine drugs check in Marseille, France, when he was found to be carrying weapons identical to those used in the shooting. A second suspect, Nacer Bendrer, was later identified and arrested.

Nemmouche had previously spent time in French prisons, where he became involved in radical Islam. Upon his release, he spent more than a year in Syria. It was in prison that he met Bendrer, who supplied him with the weapons used in the attack. Investigators identified a third suspect, but the charges against him were later dismissed due to the evidence being considered too weak.

Nemmouche and Bendrer were formally indicted in April 2018, and tried before the court of assizes of Brussels in early 2019. After two months of trial hearings, a verdict was rendered: Nemmouche was found guilty of having committed four terrorist murders, whilst Bendrer was found guilty of being the co-author of the murders by having supplied Nemmouche with the weapons used in the attack. The theory that Nemmouche was framed by foreign intelligence officials, put forward by his defence, was rejected. Nemmouche was sentenced to life imprisonment whilst Bendrer was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. Both were later also sentenced to pay close to one million euro in damages to the victims' next of kin.