This Thursday, at the end of the morning, the courthouses of Liège were victims of a network failure which had important consequences on the course of the hearings. Indeed, it was no longer possible to make calls from the courtrooms, there was no longer wifi and worse, the court clerks no longer had any access to the program which allows them to take the minutes of hearings.
The clerks were therefore forced to take notes on their computers and will then have to enter the minutes of the hearings into the system. The court ushers were also forced to go to the police station to inform the police inspectors that the detainees were expected in the courtrooms. “Seems to be progress”, joked the judge.
Repercussions at the registry
On the side of the registry, the atmosphere was no more serene. “I had to file a notice of appeal and I’ve been waiting here for 11 hours“, reported us a lawyer who was still on site waiting at 2 p.m. “I’m not going back to Seraing to come back later. I absolutely have to file this appeal today! Besides, I only have ten percent battery left on my cell phone. There are days when it doesn’t want to work…”
The situation had not returned to normal at 2:30 p.m. Around 3 p.m., the prosecution informed the court that the company Proximus had informed that it had inadvertently cut a telephone cable during the work. Since the telephone network, but also wifi pass through the telephone, nothing worked. While the prosecution was not optimistic regarding the chances of recovering the network, it seemed to have been restored shortly following 3 p.m.!
