The criminal court of Brussels on Wednesday imposed prison terms of up to one year on 16 travellers who had presented a false certificate of a negative PCR test at Brussels Airport in recent months in order to be able to travel.
It is the first group among 160 people to be brought to court for that reason. In the last few months, around 820 people have been caught at Brussels Airport, trying to pass with a forged certificate. About 80% of them have accepted a criminal settlement of 750 euros, and therefore do not go to court. The others are pursued in groups by the Halle-Vilvoorde prosecutor’s office.
Twelve of the defendants were absent during the hearing. The court imposed a six-month prison term and 1,600 euros fine on 11 of them for forgery of documents or forgery in computer science. For one defendant, the prison sentence was doubled because he actually had corona at the time of his false certificate.
A woman who was present, but maintained she was innocent, received a six-month suspended sentence and a fine of 800 euros. The other three people present at the trial received 60-hour labour sentences, with alternate sentences of one year in prison.
The court ruled in its judgment that there are “few such textbooks of uninhibited selfish behaviour.” The defendants “deliberately endangered society by placing their own freedom to travel above the public interest“.
We reported earlier that a man had been sentenced to one year in prison and a 4,000 euros fine for the same reason.
