2016 attacks in Brussels: start of the trial, a key step for the victims

Published on: 09/12/2022 – 07:20 The trial of the attacks in Brussels which killed 32 people on March 22, 2016, opens on Monday in Brussels. Ten defendants are implicated, while 960 civil parties have been identified at this stage. This is the largest trial ever organized in Belgium before a popular jury. Thirty-two dead and many other lives “destroyed” by serious physical or psychological injuries: the victims of the jihadist attacks of March 2016 in Brussels consider the trial, which kicks off on Monday September 12, as a stage key on the road to reconstruction. 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.>> To read: Brussels attacks: Salah Abdelslam and nine other defendants dismissed 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, “i He will not come” to this preliminary hearing, his lawyer Delphine Paci told AFP on Saturday, without commenting on the follow-up. The Brussels attacks 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, leaving hundreds injured in addition to the 32 dead. At this stage, 960 civil parties have been listed in what is being billed as the largest trial ever organized in Belgium in front of a popular jury.”My life is completely destroyed””My life is completely destroyed, I have lost my friends, my pilot hobby”, confided Philippe Vandenberghe, one of the civil parties, a volunteer rescuer who suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and still has nightmares. On the morning of March 22, 2016, this executive from Brussels-Zaventem airport has just arrived at his office when he hears the double explosion which devastates the ground floor where hundreds of travelers waiting to check in their luggage. 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.>> To read: Tokyo 2021: leg amputated after the attacks in Brussels, Béatrice de Lavalette is back in the saddle 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 the follow-up of a training of ambulance driver. Monday morning, Philippe Vandenberghe intends to be present to discover in their box the suspects who answer d ‘”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. happened will always exist in us”, notes for his part Sébastien Bellin, who lost the use of a leg in this attack. “I evacuated all hatred (against the perpetrators), it would drain the energy whose I need to rebuild myself. I have also accepted my handicap”, adds this 44-year-old former professional basketball player. He sees the trial as “an important step in (his) journey”. He too is 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 will bring new elements. unhappy childhood, the influence of an imam or the need to fight for the caliphate,” he told AFP. in France. Among them Salah Abdeslam, sentenced to irreducible life in Paris, and the Belgian-Moroccan Mohamed Abrini (life with 22 years security). After Monday’s hearing, the court must sit again on October 10 to appoint 12 jurors. and 24 alternates. The proceedings 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. With AFP