| Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting | |
|---|---|
 The Jewish Museum of Belgium, pictured in 2009 | |
| Location | Jewish Museum of Belgium Brussels, Belgium |
| Date | 24 May 2014 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 embraced Islamic extremism. 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 charges against him were dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
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 hearings, Nemmouche was found guilty of four terrorist murders, whilst Bendrer was found guilty of being an accomplice by supplying Nemmouche with weapons.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. Both were later also sentenced to pay close to one million euro in damages to the victims' next of kin. This was the first attack committed by the Islamic State in Europe.