It was 9 a.m. on March 22, 2016, and Police Officer T. thought the worst was behind her. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at Brussels’ Zaventem Airport, where they happened to be working that day. She’d seen the horror from afar, first helping secure the crime scene and learning that a friend she knew had lost a leg in the blast. Then she drove back to the city center with two colleagues, in shock and at the same time relieved.
“Madam Chairman, I can’t hide the fact that we were happy to be able to leave Zaventem, because we had already seen a lot of things,” says police officer T. Then her voice chokes.
Her hair parted on the left and cut short on the sides, her uniform shirt neatly ironed, sits policewoman T., employed by the Brussels railway police, as a witness in the courtroom. A slim energetic woman, 50 years old. She fiddles with a water bottle helplessly for a while. Laurence Massart, the presiding judge, gives her time. The bottle is finally open, policewoman T. takes a sip. Then she tells of the radio message that reached her shortly after nine on March 22, 2016: another explosion, this time at the Maelbeek underground station. Policewoman T. and her colleagues were in the immediate vicinity.
The courtroom belongs to the victims in these first few weeks
With sirens and lights flashing, the three set off, saw dark smoke rising from the entrance to the subway from afar, recognized bleeding, panicked people who stormed outside. The three police officers parked the car and began their way downstairs to a place that Officer T. will experience as hell.
A first approach to hell – that’s what the trial of the Brussels terrorist attacks achieved in the first five weeks. The 32 dead, 16 at the airport and 16 in the subway, were once again given a name, a face, and a story in the courtroom. 32 short biographies were read out. People on the move, to work, to university, to a wedding, on vacation, to sign a new lease – torn from the lives of three Islamist suicide bombers who belonged to the same Franco-Belgian terrorist cell as the perpetrators of November 13, 2015 in Paris. Grid squares were used in the courtroom to show where the bodies had been found, and the criteria used to identify them were explained in detail.
In this first phase, the courtroom belonged to the victims and their families, but also to the paramedics, firefighters, doctors and police officers who were the first to arrive. Golden Retriever “Lucky” was often used, a kind of cuddly dog that is supposed to support traumatized people in their statements.
Overcoming the trauma, however, always took place under undignified circumstances. Because the process is overlaid by a dispute about “nude examinations”. The question at stake: Is it appropriate that the defendants have to undress in front of the guards and bend over naked every day of the trial so that their anus can also be examined for concealed weapons?
The defense attorneys warn against contesting the whole process
The defense attorneys objected and were right, the presiding judge ordered that the “nudity examination” must be justified in each individual case. Since then, the authority responsible for the prisoner transport has presented justifications every day that sometimes seem flimsy and sometimes are obviously incorrect. Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the Paris death squad and allegedly involved in the preparations for the Brussels bloodbath, was reading a book about modern hand-to-hand combat techniques, it was said. In fact, he reads an ordinary fitness book. “If this continues,” said Vincent Lurquin, one of the defense attorneys, “the whole process could be challenged. And we’ll start over in two years.”
Victim and survivor spokespersons are appalled, and their anger is not directed at defenders. They are angry with the Belgian judiciary, the Belgian state, which did not adequately prepare the process. That’s what it says in Belgian newspaper commentaries: the country is making a fool of itself. Comparisons are made to the Paris process, which was exemplary. In Brussels, on the other hand, the start was six weeks late because the defense attorneys had the individual cabins in which they wanted to isolate their clients in the courtroom dismantled. And now the spectacle of the “nude examinations”. Again and again, the accused use it as an opportunity to boycott the trial.
Salah Abdeslam is not in the courtroom when police officer T. testifies. He called in sick. They grew up in the same Brussels district, the Islamist and the policewoman, and they will forever remain connected through the hell of the Maelbeek subway.
The policewoman says that on the way down she first noticed vending machines and ticket machines that had been displaced by the force of the explosion. Backpacks and handbags left on the stairs. A single rose. Down on the platform first traces of blood and then of human flesh. Two legs sticking out of the doors of the tattered subway car. The charred body of a woman, her head no longer recognizable as a head, but her arms still seeming to beg for help.
Over the radio, the three received the order to look for more bombs. Policewoman T. says she gave the two colleagues last words for her family and friends – in case she was killed. The others would have done the same. At that point her voice fails again.
The judge asks how she processed these terrible experiences. “That may sound idiotic, Madam Chairperson,” replies police officer T., “I still remember everything from that day. It’s locked away somewhere in my head, but it’s always present. But at some point I had to remember the date, March 22, 2016 consciously memorize it. I just kept forgetting it.”