The statements of the victims have shaken the judgment of the attack in Brussels

Victims Terrorist attacks in Brussels in 2016 spoke this week for the first time since the beginning of the trial of the alleged attackers, and shook the process with the testimonies and emotions with which some of the survivors recalled those attacks that 32 dead and about 300 wounded.

Until this Thursday, only the victims of the attack in Zaventem Airporton the outskirts of the Belgian capital, where the first two explosions took place, causing 16 deaths, and later the victims of the second attack in Brussels metrowhere the explosion left 16 more dead at Maelbeek station, near the headquarters of the European Commission.

The first victim to speak was Beatrice de Lavalette, 24 years oldwho emotionally recalled, as reported by the local press, the attack at the airport, which caused her to stay a month in a coma and they had to amputate his legs below the knee.

“I rose from the ground and then it got dark. Shortly after that, I regained consciousness and saw my leg bent at a right angle (…) I saw a door that seemed like a light in the dark, and then I realized that I was not dead,” De Lavalette testified in court, according to the Belgian news agency.

This young woman, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was waiting for a plane to meet her family in the USA, but due to her injuries, as she explained, the following months were marked by numerous surgeries and skin grafts. “It also took a lot of mental strength to overcome these events, I was 17 years old and my life was over“, he asserted.

During the week, other people who directly survived the attacks passed through the court, as well as relatives of the dead and injured, such as Loubna Selassi, the wife of a baggage porter who lost her leg in the attack on the airport.

During his speech, which was recorded by the Belgian agency, Selassi directly addressed the defendants in the room: “My religion, Islam, should not be confused with the despicable acts that were committed,” he told them.

There is a total ten accused in this trial, six of whom have already been convicted in France of involvement in the 2015 Paris attacks, including salah abdeslamthe only survivor of those attacks in the capital of France.

Of the ten defendants on trial for the bombing in Brussels, claims the terrorist organization Islamic Stateseven are in pre-trial detention, two are at large, and another is missing, but still charged due to the lack of formal evidence to prove his alleged death in Syria in 2017.

However, a lawyer from victims’ association Life4Brussels, Aline Fery, has warned the court hearing the attacks on the metro and airport in the Belgian capital that some of the victims who have been called to testify will not be able to do so. , partly due to the fact that the alleged perpetrators were in front of them.

«Some people do not have the strength to face the court, the gaze of the accused and the suffering. This does not mean that they are not interested in the court, far from it. They just don’t have the guts,” Fery said.

Namely, between this Monday and this Tuesday, the first two days in which the victims testified, only 11 of the 15 scheduled appeared in court.

Some of them instead sent written statements to the president of the court, Laurence Massart, which the judge later read in court.

With the first week of victim testimony, the trial enters a new phase in which survivors and relatives will speak for about a month, after the Prosecutor’s Office and the defendants’ lawyers have already intervened, with statements from the prosecution and defense, as well as case investigators and statements from emergency teams.