The arduous process of jury selection began today ahead the trial of nine alleged jihadists suspected of involvement in the 2016 terrorist attacks in Belgium, in which 32 people died. Five of the accused have already been sentenced by a Paris court for their roles in the terrorist attacks in November 2015.
The court in Brussels has summoned 1,000 citizens in order to choose among them 12 main jurors with 24 understudies on standby and able to follow daily evidence hearings for months.
The trial should have begun in October, but there was controversy over the dock, in which the accused were to have been held in individual glass-walled boxes. The defendants' areas were rebuilt as a single, shared space.
Hearings are scheduled to begin on 5 December, in the former headquarters of the NATO military alliance, temporarily converted into a huge high-security court complex.
Links to Paris attacks
The nine accused are suspected of having helped with the preparation and perpetration of near-simultaneous bomb attacks in the departures area of Brussels Zaventem airport and in a station of the metro system on 22 March 2016.
Five of the Brussels accused have already been sentenced to long periods in jail for their parts in the Paris attacks.
Salah Abdeslam is among the defendants. Already sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in jail for being part of the ten-man squad which killed 130 people in the 2015 Paris attacks, he will be joined in the box in Belgium by his childhood friend, Mohamed Abrini, also found guilty of complicity in the Paris attacks.
The mastermind of the Bataclan murders, Oussama Atar, will be tried in his absence. He is believed to have died in an international coalition airstrike against an Islamic State camp in Syria.
Other possible targets?
Investigators believe that the terrorists were planning a much more ambitious attack, targeting the Euro 2016 football competition in France.
When Abdeslam was arrested by Belgian police on 18 March 2016, they decided to change their plans and attack the Brussels targets.
Two terrorists died in suicide explosions at Zaventem airport, a third blew himself up in a city metro station. In addition to the 32 people who died, hundreds were injured.
One thousand people, including those injured and the families of the bereaved, will testify at this trial as civil plaintiffs.
"I don't really expect a lot of answers," said Sandrine Couturier, who was on the Maelbeek metro platform and plans to come to face the defendants.
"But I want to confront myself with what human beings are capable of doing. I have to accept that not everyone is good," the PTSD survivor told AFP.
Rebuilding
Like many of those who have spoken to reporters, she suffers from memory loss and concentration problems. Many seek treatment for depression.
Sebastien Bellin, a former professional basketball player who was due to fly to New York on the morning of March 22, lost the use of a leg in the attack.
He says today that he feels no hatred. "It would suck the energy I need to rebuild myself," he says.
The trial, the largest ever organised before a Belgian court of assizes, is expected to continue until June 2023.
