Of the thousand people drawn, twelve were selected as holders and twenty-four as deputy to judge, on Monday, the ten accused of the trial of the double attack which left 32 dead and 340 injured in the Belgian capital.
by Jean-Pierre Stroobants (Brussels, correspondent)
They were 1,000 at the start; 339 had obtained an automatic exemption. All the others were distributed in nine rooms of the Justitia, the former NATO headquarters transformed into a courthouse “Bis”, in Brussels, Wednesday, November 30. In this crowd, it was necessary to find the twelve members and the twenty-four substitutes of the popular jury which will be called upon to decide on the guilt of the ten accused, in the trial of the double attack which caused the death of thirty-two people and injured them Three hundred-quarters on March 22, 2016, at Brussels airport and in the metro of the Belgian capital.
This time, Salah Abdeslam and his companions will no longer be locked up in the individual and totally glazed boxes including the president, Laurence Massart, yielding to the lawyer of lawyers and contradicting the federal prosecutor’s office, had ordered dismantling in September, when preliminary audiences.
Today, M Massart faces another difficulty: to convince citizens only to sit for six to nine months – the estimated duration of this trial – is an essential “democratic exercise”. “Many jurors I have known were delighted to participate,” she says. Confronted for ten hours in the parade of potential jurors who, one by one, paraded, the president will have found that her message convinced only one minority of them.
“I am allergic to the lactose “
The confrontation was very revealing, mixing true social difficulties (children to keep for lack of crèche places, sick parents to treat, employers who threaten to dismiss, fragile self -employed statutes threatened by the crisis …) , countless health problems (real or visibly fictitious) and situations that justice apprehends with difficulty: a single mother ignorant who could take care all day of children that their father neglects, a father who underlines that his insurance- Life would protect his family if he had to die but would not cover a compulsory presence at this trial which would lead, for him, the loss of his only customer. And its bankruptcy.
Some are simply afraid, like this lady who melts in tears in front of the magistrates. Others try everything for everything to be exempt: “I had a very close relationship with one of the lawyers present,” said one. “I am asthmatic, I am allergic to lactose, fructose, gluten”, underlines another.
A quidam arrives at a helmet on the ears, claiming to understand only the Dutchman, while his town hall informed him as a French -speaking. “My judgment is already made, they need a life conviction,” tries another by showing the accused, supervised by masked police officers. “These are Comptoir remarks, protests the president. When you enter a file, things change and we listen to the elements for the dependent and discharge.”
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