The organization of the trial of the Brussels attacks continues to experience all kinds of problems. The hearing has already had to be postponed because the defendants’ box was found to be non-compliant. We learn today that victims and their relatives are summoned to appear … in the jury. An administrative error that angered the civil parties.
She lost her mother in the attacks in Brussels in March 2016. Katarina Viktorsson is a civil party in the trial which opens on December 5. However, she receives a summons indicating that she is a potential candidate to join the jury of this trial. An incomprehensible administrative error in his eyes.
“When I realized, it was a big shock. I had an anxiety attack for 1 hour. I mightn’t think anymore, I had tears flowing, I mightn’t speak anymore”, she confides. “Then I came to my senses, and now it’s anger. There’s really this feeling of being pissed off. It calls into question the competence of the whole system”.
A clumsiness a priori without consequences on the course of the trial, but for this young woman, it is one mistake too many. A few weeks earlier, she received in her mailbox the investigation reports containing details of the circumstances of her mother’s death following the explosion at the airport. A usual procedure before a trial, but she discovers unsuspected and unbearable details. “It’s terrible believed. It’s the cause of death. Just talking regarding it gives me chills. These are not details that I wanted to know. I understand that they may have the obligation to do so, but we must be warned”, she says.
The young woman feels despised, like the day when her mother’s personal effects were brought back to her. “Without warning, without telling me anything, I was given personal effects in which we can see that there were sharp objects that had gone through. What did that have to do to his body? There too, I was not ready to see these damaged items. The first thing I see is my business card”, she adds.
Lack of delicacy, red tape and lack of recognition. Katarina, she says, has more anger towards the authorities than towards those who carried out the attacks. “It’s a bit upside down because the anger should be once morest the people who did this. But we have been so disappointed, for more than six years…”, she concludes.
Katarina says she expects nothing from the trial. She’s not sure she can attend yet.
