Turn off emotions. That’s what it came down to for lab technicians Nathalie B. and Dieter C. of the technical and scientific police on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After all the injured had been taken away, they descended with a doctor among the dead in Maalbeek metro station.
“The networks were overloaded,” said Nathalie B. during a PowerPoint presentation on Monday. “At a certain point there was coverage once more. Among the rubble, all those phones started beeping. There were those who stubbornly kept calling and we had to put them on silent. We saw messages light up: ‘ça va?’ or “where are you?” We had a hard time there.”
Just regarding everyone in the courtroom had a hard time on Monday. “What you see here is a piece of a skull”, was Dieter C.’s explanation of a chunk of bone found on the platform, tens of meters away from the explosion in the second car. “Here, under a subway seat, you see a severed head”, pointed C.. “And here, on the platform, another one.”
Torn legs, arms and torsos came in close-up and were given the names of those closest to Khalid El Bakraoui that morning. One of the slides showed a wide-eyed head found on the platform where it had landed right in the middle of the frame of a garbage bag holder. “This is the head of Khalid El Bakraoui”, pointed C. with a highlighter. “We immediately started comparing it to surveillance footage from that morning.”
In a close-up of that image, between the metro gates, you can see how the man with the backpack holds a tuft of blue rope between thumb and forefinger. The detonator of the bomb. “That hand, with that tuft of string between thumb and forefinger, you can see in this image”, Nathalie B pointed out. “Dieter sent the digital prints of the dead hand to the lab that same day. That way we were able to identify Khalid El Bakraoui with certainty quite quickly.”
Nude searches
Victim organization Life4Brussels says it is increasingly assuming that the sample process, which would last until July, will have to be redone followingwards. The FPS Justice announced on Friday that it will appeal once morest the ban on systematic naked searches of seven suspects pronounced by an interim judge.
Attorney Virginie Taelman has now announced on behalf of Bilal El Makhoukhi that she will send a bailiff to Haren Prison to establish a breach of the nude search ruling, which many see as step 1 to proceedings before the Court of Cassation.
“A new trial will be one without civil parties,” says Gaëtan Meulemans of Life4Brussels. “Justice does not care regarding the judge in summary proceedings. Will she do the same if that decision is upheld on appeal? We are already receiving numerous calls from victims saying they are withdrawing from this process.”
