Mehdi Nemmouche

Mehdi Nemmouche (مهدي نموش; born 17 April 1985), a 29-year-old French citizen, was arrested on 30 May 2014 at the Saint-Charles railway/bus station in Marseille during a random drugs search when he got off a coach arriving from Amsterdam via Brussels.

He was found to be carrying two weapons identical to those used in the attack, a white sheet bearing ISIS insignia, and a video with an ISIS flag in which he claimed responsibility for the killings.

Nemmouche was born in Roubaix, a French town near the Belgian border.

He was taken into care at the age of three months following neglect by his single mother and placed with a foster family.

At the age of sixteen, by which time he already had a criminal record, he was moved to a group home in Paris.

At the age of seventeen he went to live with his Algerian grandmother in Tourcoing.

Between 2007 and 2012 he spent five years in various prisons in the south of France after being convicted of robbery.

According to security camera footage, the attacker appeared to wear a chest-mounted camera, like Mohammed Merah, who filmed his acts during the 2012 Toulouse and Montauban shootings, although the camera failed during filming.

The Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Didier Reynders, happened to be in the vicinity of the museum and heard the gunshots.

The Minister of the Interior, Joëlle Milquet, was also nearby and arrived on the scene a few minutes later.

Four people were killed in the shooting: Emmanuel and Miriam Riva, a middle-aged Israeli couple on holiday from Tel Aviv who were visiting the museum; Dominique Sabrier, a French museum volunteer in her sixties; Alexandre Strens, a Belgian employee of the museum in his twenties.

The first three victims died instantly, while the fourth died nearly two weeks later in hospital, having never regained consciousness after being shot in the head.

Nemmouche became radicalized in prison and left for Syria in December 2012, soon after his release.

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.

On the afternoon of 24 May 2014, Nemmouche walked up to the Jewish Museum of Belgium in the Sablon/Zavel district in central Brussels carrying a handgun.

He shot an Israeli couple in the entrance to the museum and then approached the reception desk, where he shot a Belgian employee of the museum.

He next took an assault rifle out of a bag to shoot a French female volunteer at her desk in a nearby room, after which he fled the scene on foot and disappeared into the crowd.

The attack, which lasted less than ninety seconds, was captured on the museum's security cameras.

The Israeli couple and the French volunteer died instantly, while the Belgian employee was critically injured and died nearly two weeks later in hospital.

Emmanuel and Miriam Riva were buried in Tel Aviv on 27 May 2014, with the Belgian ambassador to Israel attending the ceremony.

Alexandre Strens, who was born in Morocco to a Jewish mother and Algerian Berber father, was buried in a Muslim cemetery in Taza, Morocco on 10 June 2014.

A nationwide manhunt was launched for the attacker.

Belgian police appealed to the public to help identify him, releasing CCTV from the museum which showed his image, partly obscured.

The police described him as being of medium height and athletic build, and wearing a dark baseball cap.

A man who was seen driving from the museum was detained, but released after questioning, and remained a witness in the investigation.

On the day after the attack, deputy prosecutor Ine Van Wymersch said the shooter "probably acted alone, was armed and well prepared" and stated that the motive for the attack was still open.

The following day, it was announced that the attack was being investigated as a terrorist incident.

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.