The ex-wife of jihadist Hakim Benladghem has been sentenced to just 150 hours of community service after being arrested for “possession of weapons in a terrorist context”.
The Belgian authorities convicted the former wife of Hakim Benladghem, named Laila, in early October in relation to a weapons cache that was found in the former couples’ home in March 2013 that included an AR-15 style rifle and an MP5 submachine gun, L’Est Republicain reports.
The weapons were found shortly after the death of Benladghem, who was killed by Belgian special forces who attempted to arrest him on the A8 motorway on the 23rd of March, 2013.
Before his death, Benladghem had given his wife €30,000 for a “good lawyer”, although after being arrested, the jihadist’s wife had described him as a “dangerous fool” to investigators.
Since her arrest, Laila is said to have distanced herself from the radical Islamist scene in Belgium and remarried. Her supposed change of heart led to the prosecutor requesting a three-year suspended sentence but remarking that if the trial took place in 2015, he would have demanded five years in prison.
Romain Delcoigne represented Laila and has protested the terrorist context of the conviction, claiming that Laila was under the heavy influence of Hakim Benladghem at the time of her arrest and requested community service instead of a suspended sentence.
Delcoigne is also known as being the lawyer for the Paris Bataclan terrorist Salah Abdeslam. The Islamist was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison in an April 2018 trial in Belgium for the shootout in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek that led to his arrest in March 2016.
Abdeslam is currently awaiting trial for the November 2015 Paris attacks at the Bataclan nightclub and elsewhere in which 130 people were killed and 350 were wounded.
French investigations into the attack concluded in late October. Abdeslam, along with 13 others, is set to face trial in connection with the attack.