Six men have been convicted of helping carry out the Islamic State suicide attacks in Brussels which killed 32 people and left more than 300 others injured.

Belgium’s deadliest peacetime attack saw co-ordinated bombings at the capital’s airport and underground station in March 2016.

At the time, the country was still on maximum terror alert following the Paris attacks, which had taken place only months earlier.

Among the defendants was Salah Abdeslam, who is already serving a life sentence in France over his role in those atrocities, which killed 130 and injured more than 400 in November 2015.

But Belgium’s biggest ever criminal trial was without the terrorists who masterminded or led the bombings, having either blown themselves up or been killed in police shootouts or the war in Syria.

The morning rush hour attacks at Zavantem Airport and on the subway’s central commuter line shook the city — headquarters of the European Union and NATO — and put the country on edge.

Jamila Adda, president of the Life4Bruxelles victims’ association, gathered a group of survivors at the special courthouse to hear Tuesday’s verdict.

Among them was a man named Frederic, who said the ‘atrocious crimes’ still haunt him.

‘We have been waiting for this for seven years, seven years that weighed heavily on the victims,’ he told reporters.

Frederic, among the commuters who survived the attack at the Maelbeek metro station, spoke on condition that his last name not be published to protect his identity as a victim of trauma.

Survivors supported each other through the mammoth proceedings, some coming every day.

‘It is important to be together, to hear the decision of justice,’ Frederic said. And then, they hope ‘to be able to turn the page’.

Abdeslam was the only survivor among the Islamic State extremists who struck Paris in November 2015 and were part of a Franco-Belgian network that went on to target Brussels four months later.

After months on the run following the Paris attacks, Abdeslam was captured in Brussels on March 18, 2016, and his arrest may have prompted other members of the Islamic State group cell to rush ahead with attack plans on the Belgian capital.

Also on trial in Brussels was Mohamed Abrini, childhood friend of Abdeslam and a Brussels native who walked away from Zaventem airport after his explosives failed to detonate.

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