One out of the six former law enforcement agents charged in a secondary trial in the complex Bommeleeër case was convicted by the 9th criminal chamber in Luxembourg City on Thursday.
The first Bommeleeër trial into a series of bombings that occurred in Luxembourg in the 1980s came to a halt in July 2014 after a mammoth 177 days in court over suspicions that several witnesses had made false statements.
In October 2023, the prosecutor’s press office confirmed that proceedings against eight defendants – five former leaders of the gendarmerie police unit, one former member of a gendarmerie special unit (the BMG), and two former investigators working on the case – would go ahead. Only six suspects were eventually charged and tried, with one person convicted on Thursday.
Pierre Reuland, the former commander of the BMG, was sentenced in the first instance to three years in prison and a fine of €5,000. The prison sentence was suspended on probation. The public prosecutor’s office had demanded a prison sentence of five years.
The court ruled that Reuland gave false testimony, in particular regarding the surveillance of Ben Geiben on the weekend of 19 October 1985, with the aim to avoid having to explain why the investigation against Geiben was dropped.
At the time, Geiben, the founder of the BMG, became the subject of the investigation himself. Following the October 1985 weekend, he was struck off the list of suspects.
Deputy prosecutor Dominique Peters described Reuland as a central figure who had obstructed investigations and made others out to be liars.
The secondary trial did not address the bombings themselves but only testimony provided during the 2013-2014 trial.
Subsidiary complaint dismissed
The two defendants from the first Bommeleeër trial, Marc Scheer and Jos Wilmes, had claimed damages of around €580,000 each in this secondary trial. The state had also lined up as a joint plaintiff. Both applications were rejected by the criminal chamber.
Appeal proceedings are considered very likely. The presumption of innocence applies until a final conviction is handed down.
About the Bommeleeër
Luxembourg was hit by a spree of 20 bomb explosions between 1984 and 1986, targeting locations including electricity and gas infrastructure, police stations, newspaper offices, a meeting of the European Council, the airport in Findel and a court building.
The case rumbled on for decades as suspicion turned to members within Luxembourg’s own security services, and later the complicity of investigators and obstacles faced in uncovering what really happened.
In 2005, a witness told then-Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker that he had spotted Prince Jean, the brother of Grand Duke Henri, at the scene of one of the attacks. A secret recording of Juncker speaking about the case and Prince Jean by former security service chief Marco Mille would turn out to bring down Juncker’s government.
Under mounting pressure over security services deemed out of control, Juncker eventually called early elections in 2013 over fears his coalition was about to collapse. The DP-LSAP-Déi Gréng that emerged from this vote remained in power until 2023.
(This article was first published by the Luxemburger Wort. Translated using AI. Edited and with additional reporting by Cordula Schnuer.)