At the Paris attacks trial, the three co-prosecutors continued their summary of the evidence they believe is more than sufficient to see each of the accused suffer the harshest penalties permitted by law.
They are relentless. Camille Hennetier, Nicolas Braconnay and Nicolas Le Bris are the co-prosecutors in this trial.
On Thursday, they moved their story of the preparation of the November 2015 attacks from the Islamic State heartland in Syria to Brussels, demolishing the claims of the accused as they went.
Osama Krayem told investigators he had been a humanitarian volunteer with Islamic State.
No, insisted Hennetier. He was a fighter. He was injured in battle. He was promoted to one of the key IS military units. He was "honoured" as one of the uniformed guards who watched the burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot.
The three Bataclan killers, Mostefaï, Amimour and Aggad, were all members of the same élite military unit during their days as IS combattants in Syria.
Sofien Ayari may have been politically rather than religiously motivated. He proved himself, nonetheless, a brave and dependable soldier.
Muhammed Usman and Adel Hadadi travelled thousands of kilometres, one from Pakistan, the other from Algeria, and then sat around in Syria, doing nothing while the soldiers of the caliphate fought desperately around them?
No, said Hennetier.
These men, like all the others sent to join the so-called Brussels group, were chosen because they had proved their commitment to the cause, because they could be trusted, because they had volunteered to take part in suicide missions.
Each had the confidence of attacks coordinator, Ousama Atar, in Syria. And he, in the wake of a series of failed European terrorist plots in the course of 2015, could not afford another setback. He chose the very best for a mission of crucial importance.
Preparing for murder
And so Thursday's hearing continued. Those who were chosen to help with the preparation of the attacks in Europe, but who had not been to Syria, were men of confidence, either family members or life-long friends of the Belgian coordinators, the Bakraoui brothers and Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
None of them could have been in any doubt about the murderous nature of the action being prepared.
Mohammed Bakkali drove the three men who would become the Bataclan killers to their Brussels hideout when they arrived in the Belgian capital. He was aiding and abetting a terrorist enterprise.
"There were no second-rank helpers," Nicolas Braconnay assured the court. "If the eventual killers hadn't been provided with false documents, with equipment, with food, there would have been no attacks."
The prosecutors sometimes wasted time and energy establishing facts that appeared insignificant from a legal point of view.
Whether Abdslam drove two or four groups of terrorist volunteers from eastern Europe to Belgium won't change his judicial fate. He is already in line for a lifetime prison sentence.
Similarly, in the case of Mohamed Bakkali, who is accused of renting some of the hideouts used by the terrorists to prepare the explosives used in Paris. Whether he rented one apartment or all six identified by the Belgian police will in no way alter his fate before this court.
The prosecutors often seemed to rely on negative evidence: because one of the accused cannot prove that he was not involved in some phase of the preparations, that means he probably was.
Some of the alleged illegal activities are based on the absence of mobile telephone activity: because the mobile phone belonging to an accused was switched off for eight hours, he must have been doing something wrong during that time.
Because Ali El Haddad Asufi cannot prove that he went to Amsterdam in October 2015 to buy drugs, he must, therefore, have been trying to buy weapons.
None of the defence teams will allow that sort of shoddy reasoning to pass next week when it will be their turn to speak.
No mercy for Farid Kharkhach
On Friday, the prosecution will ask the tribunal to pronounce the maximum sentence allowed by law on each of the suspects. Those accused of terrorist crimes will risk much longer jail terms than those convicted as common criminals.
And there's a crucial distinction between "association with terrorists" and "complicity in terrorism".
Farid Kharkhach, who admits to providing some of the false identity cards used by the killers, will have been hoping for a criminal sentence involving "association". Yesterday, Braconnay dashed those hopes.
Addressing the prisoner directly across the legal benches, Braconnay was calm but unflinching.
"Monsieur Kharkhach, you have lied to this court about the pressure under which you first testified. You have grotesquely maligned the Belgian police and judicial authorities.
"We don't suspect you of any ideological commitment. We believe you acted out of cowardice and greed.
"You lied about your fear of Khalid El Bakraoui. You knew he was a dangerously radicalised Islamic fanatic, not a criminal gangster.
"Despite the social danger posed by a man with such extreme religious leanings, you went ahead and helped him for a paltry fee of a few hundred euros. We call on this court to declare you guilty of the crime of aiding and abetting a terrorist enterprise."
The trial continues.
