"A court in Belgium has refused to allow defence lawyers in a high-profile drugs case extra time after a forensic expert found that digital evidence obtained by police in a hacking operation against the Sky ECC encrypted phone network and relied on by prosecutors was "unreliable". The Antwerp Regional Court heard evidence from a British forensic expert that raised new doubts over the digital evidence supplied by Belgian police to prosecute multiple criminal cases linked to a high-profile drugs kingpin, Nordin El Hajjioui,"
"The court heard that there were significant differences between datasets submitted in 2022 and 2025 that prosecutors had claimed were "identical". It found that 108,000 messages had been added to the most recent dataset. Prosecution claims that the new messages had only recently been decrypted did not stand up to scrutiny, as the unencrypted versions of the new messages did not exist in the original data, and a large proportion of the new messages had yet to be decrypted."
A forensic expert identified errors and inconsistencies in digital data used to prosecute cases linked to Nordin El Hajjioui, suggesting mishandling by those who processed the files. Datasets presented as identical in 2022 and 2025 differed, with 108,000 messages added to the later set. Many of the added messages lacked unencrypted originals and remained largely undecrypted, undermining decryption claims. The processes for supplying Sky ECC data lacked transparency and verifiability and did not show conformity with international forensic standards. Data files were not certified with digital fingerprints, file hashes, or digital signatures to ensure integrity.
Read at ComputerWeekly.com
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