The Brussels Assize Court begins its work with a hearing scheduled for one day to settle procedural questions, in particular the order in which witnesses are to appear.
On the side of the defense of the ten accused, several lawyers intend to protest against the conditions of appearance in closed individual boxes, limiting, in their eyes, the possibility of communicating, according to documents sent to the press.
As for the French jihadist Salah Abdeslam, the only member still alive of the commandos of November 13, 2015 in Paris and near Paris (130 dead), who is among the accused in Brussels, “he will not come” to this preliminary hearing, indicated his lawyer Delphine Paci told AFP on Saturday, without commenting on the follow-up.
The attacks in Brussels were committed by the same jihadist cell as those of November 13 in France. They were also claimed by the Islamic State organization. Three men blew themselves up, two at the airport and one in the metro, injuring hundreds in addition to the 32 dead.
At this stage, 960 civil parties have been identified in what is presented as the largest trial ever organized in Belgium before a popular jury.
“My life is completely destroyed, I have lost my friends, my pilot hobby,” said Philippe Vandenberghe, one of these civil parties, a volunteer first aider who suffers from post-traumatic stress and still has nightmares.
On the morning of March 22, 2016, this executive from Brussels-Zaventem airport had just arrived at his office when he heard the double explosion that devastated the ground floor where hundreds of travelers were waiting to check in their luggage.
– “The beginning of something else” –
With a first aid certificate, he rushes to the bedside of people on the ground, in thick smoke, in the middle of broken glass and metal.
“I intervened on 18 people, I’m sure I saved a woman”, continues this 51-year-old bachelor, met at his home in Louvain-la-Neuve (center).
Unemployed, after having had to fight with his ex-employer and the insurances on the coverage of the care, he rebuilds himself by painting and following a training as an ambulance driver.
Monday morning, Mr. Vandenberghe intends to be present to discover in their box the suspects who answer for “assassinations committed in a terrorist context” and incur life imprisonment.
For him, the trial must be “the beginning of something else”. “We hope that our suffering will be recognized, that’s the important thing,” he said.
“I don’t know if we can turn the page, what happened will always exist in us”, notes Sébastien Bellin, who lost the use of a leg in this attack.
“I evacuated all hatred (against the perpetrators), it would drain the energy I need to rebuild myself. I also accepted my disability,” adds this 44-year-old former professional basketball player. He sees the trial as “an important step in (his) journey”.
Also a civil party, traumatized by “the war situation” which he witnessed at the Maelbeek metro (16 dead, as many as in Zaventem), the former police commissioner Christian De Coninck will follow the hearings from a distance, doubting that the defendants bring new elements.
“They’re not worth traveling for them, I don’t want to hear all this shit about their unhappy childhood, the influence of an imam or the need to fight for the caliphate”, declares- he told AFP.
Six of the ten defendants were already concerned by the trial of November 13 which ended at the end of June in France. Among them Salah Abdeslam, sentenced to incompressible life in Paris, and the Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Abrini (life with 22 years of security).
After Monday’s hearing, the court is due to sit again on October 10 to appoint 12 full jurors and 24 alternates. The debates will open on October 13 for at least eight months, until June.
The trial is being held at the former Brussels headquarters of NATO, an ultra-secure building temporarily made available to Belgian justice.
