Belgian policeman appeals negligence conviction in Jewish Museum murders

A Belgian policeman is appealing his conviction for negligence in the 2014 murder case of four people gunned down at the Jewish Museum of Brussels.

The officer received a two-month suspended jail term in 2015 for failing to process in time a tip by an informant who said he recognized the assault rifle that security camera footage shows was used in the shooting on May 24, 2014.

He is scheduled to appear in October before an appeals court in a bid to prove he acted properly, the DH news website reported. The officer’s name has not been reported.

Mehdi Nemmouche, a suspected jihadist from northern France, is standing trial in Belgium for the killings, which he says he did not commit. Nemmouche was arrested in southern France several days after the shooting in a random search aboard a bus heading toward the port city of Marseille. He was carrying weapons matching the description of those used in the attack.

Separately, in the city of Toulouse in southeastern France, the first of several commemorative ceremonies was held Sunday for the seven victims of Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old Islamist who killed three French soldiers several days before he murdered four Jews at a Jewish school on March 19, 2012.

“The attack was a prelude to a national horror,” the chief rabbi of Toulouse, Avraham Weill, told the AFP news agency on Sunday. “There is a before and after the attack,” he added, using an expression that is used for watershed events.

Hundreds of Frenchmen, including four Jews who were murdered in January 2015 in a shooting attack on a kosher supermarket, have died in numerous attacks by jihadists since 2012.