A court in Belgium has adjourned a high-profile criminal case after defense lawyers raised questions about the integrity of interception data obtained by police during an operation to hack Sky's ECC encrypted telephone network.
Last week, the Antwerp District Court adjourned hearings for several defendants accused of drug trafficking offenses after defense lawyers discovered that electronic wiretapping evidence files had been altered without explanation during the trial.
The investigation centers on notorious drug lord Nordin El Hadjioui, known as Dicke “Fat” Nordin, who is accused of leading a criminal drug ring that imported drugs through Antwerp along with several other defendants.
Some 1,600 Belgian law enforcement officers took part in raids on premises linked to drugs, money laundering and bribery in March 2021 after police infiltrated Sky ECC servers in France and decrypted “hundreds of millions” of supposedly encrypted messages.
Evidence files modified
Defense lawyers at the Antwerp trial say they belatedly discovered that electronic evidence files used in the Sky ECC case had been altered and that they were given no explanation for the changes.
Justus Reisinger, a lawyer in the case, said rules in Belgium prohibiting lawyers from seeing detained clients bring computer equipment to hearings meant changes in the prosecution's evidence went undetected until last week.
He told Computer Weekly that the original electronic evidence files had been altered to include an Excel file containing another 50,000 lines of intercepted messages and “hundreds of megabytes” more of data.
At a hearing on November 20, prosecutors failed to provide an explanation and denied that the contents of the materials had been changed, causing the court to postpone the case for further investigation.
“It's significant that the court is saying we have to delay the hearing on a case like this for two months, but there's simply no other option,” Reisinger said.
He said there were now questions about the integrity of the Sky ECC data used as evidence in the case.
“Is the data obtained by France during the initial interception the same data presented to the court?” Reisinger asked. “We need to see if this is proven by the prosecutor.”
Defense lawyers have also complained that surveillance cameras installed in Dutch prisons prevent lawyers from confidentially sharing documents with their Dutch clients because they are always in view of the cameras.
Louis de Grootthe lawyer on the case in Antwerp, said: “The rooms where we meet with clients now have cameras facing the client, towards us and from above so they can see everything that happens in the documents.”
He said this was a violation of the accused's rights to a fair trial.
Nordine El-Hadjioui is said to have started drug smuggling as a 20-year-old in Antwerp before fleeing to Dubai in 2016, where he ran what a judge said was a “well-oiled criminal organization” operating in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Defense lawyer Hans Rieder, who is also representing El-Hadjiu, said prosecutors' recommendation to sentence his client to 35 years in prison was “unheard of” and more about “show” than the law.
The case is due to resume in January 2026.
