A verdict is due later this Thursday in the trial of a French man accused of murdering four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014. Mehdi Nemmouche is alleged to be the first Syria jihad veteran to have staged a terrorist attack in Europe.
33 year old Nemmouche faces a life sentence if convicted of "terrorist murders" in the Belgian capital on May 24, 2014, following his return from Syria's battlefields.
According to Belgium's federal prosecutor's office, the verdict, which had initially been expected early Thursday, will not be delivered "before the end of the day". If a guilty verdict is declared later today, sentencing will take place tomorrow, Friday.
Mehdi Nemmouche is accused of killing the four victims in cold blood in less than 90 seconds. However, addressing the court earlier this week, he denied the accusations claiming that he was "tricked".
Prosecution dismiss Mossad plot claims
His claim refers to arguments made by defence lawyers that Nemmouche was not to blame for the murders, but that he was caught up in a plot targeting the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
The legal argument centres around Israeli couple Miriam and Emmanuel Riva, the first two of the four people killed in the attack. A young Belgian employee, Alexandre Strens, and French volunteer Dominique Sabrier were also murdered.
The defence claim the museum shooting was not the work of the Islamic State armed group but a "targeted execution" aimed at Mossad agents, adding the Israeli couple who were killed worked for Mossad and had been hunted down by another attacker.
Lawyer's representing the Riva family have dismissed the theory, calling attempts to pass off the tourists as secret agents "an absolute scandal" and describing the arguments as "complete nonsense" against compelling evidence.
Investigating judges who travelled to Israel ahead of the trial confimed that Miriam Riva worked for Mossad but, as an accountant, she was not operational.
Weapons, videos and gunshot residue
Nemmouche is accused along with 30 year old Nacer Bendrer who is suspected of supplying the weapons for the attack.
Investigations have shown that the two men had dozens of telephone conversations in April 2014, when Nemmouche was allegedly preparing the attack.
Six days after the massacre, Nemmouche was arrested in the southern French city of Marseille in possession of a revolver and a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle.
At the trial, Bendrer admitted that Nemmouche had asked him for a Kalashnikov when he came to Brussels in early April, but claimed he never delivered it.
Among other personal effects, Nemmouche upon arrest carried a nylon jacket with gunshot residue, as well as a computer in which investigators found six videos claiming the attack with an off-camera voiceover thought to be Nemmouche.
To date, the prosecution says it has identified 23 pieces of evidence pointing to Nemmouche, who also physically resembles the shooter seen on the museum's surveillance video.
The prosecutors also claim the attack was the first to be carried out in Europe by a jihadist returning from fighting in Syria.
The Brussels museum killings came 18 months before the 2015 Paris attacks which left 130 dead on November 13th of that year.
