A Belgian judge handling an alleged European Parliament corruption case involving Qatar and Morocco was forced to recuse himself on Thursday due to a motion to recuse himself by a suspect who accused him of a “lack of impartiality”, according to some of the defendants’ lawyers.

This was the request made by Belgian MEP Marc Tarabella, who was indicted and jailed on Saturday as part of an investigation led by investigative judge Michel Claes.

This was stated on Thursday by his lawyer Maksym Toller during the hearing in Brussels before the court, which is tasked with deciding the issue of the continuation of pretrial detention.

At the end of that closed hearing, the judges decided to extend Tarabella’s detention, according to a statement from federal prosecutors. The same scenario for the Greek MEP Eva Kyli, imprisoned in this case for more than two months.

The lawyers of the two suspects requested conditional release. As of Thursday evening, Tarabella’s defense announced it would appeal the board’s decision.

The meeting was postponed for several hours. In connection with the motion to recuse Judge Claes this morning, it was explained that it was necessary to find another investigating judge to replace him at this stage of the proceedings.

The judge “Clez can no longer be present” in the case, said attorney Sven Meri, who is representing Eva Kylie.

The magistrate now has 48 hours to defend himself and, unless he decides to recuse himself, the Court of Appeal in Brussels will have eight days to rule, Mary said.

Four people are currently in a detention center in Belgium on suspicion of interfering in favor of foreign countries in the decision of the European Parliament.

These are Eva Kylie, Mark Tarabella, who denies the facts, and the Italians Francesco Giorgi, parliamentary assistant, partner of a Greek MP, and Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former member of the European Parliament (2004-2019), whose detention was also extended on Thursday.

A fifth suspect, Italian MEP Andrea Cozzolino, was arrested and placed under house arrest on February 11 in Italy pending an arrest warrant issued against him by Belgian justice.

Panzeri, who became the leader of a Brussels-based NGO in 2019, struck a deal with Belgian prosecutors to receive a lighter sentence in exchange for providing detailed evidence of wrongdoing by other suspects in the case.

Tarabella accuses Panzeri of unfairly implicating him. The lawyer of the Belgian MEP also believes that the judge relies on “suspicious movements of funds” in his favor, which have never been materially proven.

“None of the searches (targeting Mark Tarabella) have returned positive results,” Toller said Thursday.

“It is clear that the presumption of innocence is violated here (…) The judge clearly allows his opinion on the guilt of Tarabela to be heard,” argued this lawyer in the motion for recusal.