(AFP) Mehdi Nemmouche stands accused of carrying out Europe’s first attack by an Islamist fighter returning from the war in Syria.
But his journey from a French foster home to a Brussels court began not in a Middle Eastern desert but in a run-down industrial town.
This week, he will go on trial for four anti-Semitic murders during a shooting spree at Belgium’s Jewish Museum.
Separately, he is also accused of acting as the jailer of four French journalists taken hostage by jihadists in Aleppo in 2013.
The trial will last several weeks, but the 33-year-old is already a case study in the radicalisation of some young European Muslims.
