Former professional basketball player Sébastien Bellin delivered a testimony full of love and positivity Thursday before the Assize Court responsible for judging the attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. “These bombs, these atrocities could not extinguish that in me”, he underlined, never ceasing to thank the rescuers and all the professionals who intervened that day at Zaventem airport.
A former member of the Belgian national basketball team, the 40-year-old has suffered since the attacks from a permanent disability, which he says he accepted, and no longer feels anything in his left leg. Sébastien Bellin said he was proud to have been able to overcome, with all the people who were able to help him on this journey, “these challenges that the attacks represented”.
I saw light and incredible human strength.
On March 22, 2016, he was about to fly to New York. After the first explosion, the former athlete unknowingly “ran straight” to the second bomb, from which he was 5-6 meters away and which “tore” both his legs. “I was then on the verge of death”, he told the court. He had shrapnel in his hip and couldn’t hear or feel anything. Sébastien Bellin lost 50% of his blood in the minutes following the attack and owes his survival in particular to a tourniquet applied to him by a soldier. He also describes himself as a “survivor” and not as a victim.
“But it is also in the most difficult moments of life that life gives us the most beautiful things”, he added. Many people have indeed helped him since that day and the former basketball player, now an entrepreneur, wanted to pay tribute to them. “I was very lucky that day, among these atrocities. In these events that are very hard to understand, I saw light and incredible human strength”he insists.
After delivering strong testimony, a true ode to positivity and humanity, Sébastien Bellin, a former high-level athlete, spoke directly to the accused on Thursday. He told them that he had forgiven them for all the atrocities committed during the attack at Zaventem airport on March 22, 2016. “Gentlemen, you demanded via your lawyers to be treated like humans, I ask you today to treat me in turn like a human, to listen to me, to look at me”he launched, in a poignant silence, while the defendants present seemed attentive to his message.
There’s no place in me for hate
“Today I have decided to forgive you, I forgive you”, did he declare. “By forgiving you, I detach myself from the atrocities of which you are accused and I choose to make even more room for love”he continued.
The former basketball player, now disabled, then felt that the mission of the defendants had failed. “Instead of destroying me, you created in me a human with an incredible energy of compassion, tolerance, open-mindedness, an even more powerful humanity. A humanity that even two bombs could not extinguish in me,” he said. “I stand before you, not as a victim, but as a survivor.”
Sébastien Bellin, 44 years old and father of two daughters, then considered the power of forgiveness as “the last step in his healing”. “There is no place in me for hatred, revenge. I rather choose to give this place to love and tolerance”, he pointed out.
He concluded by offering his help to the defendants for whom forgiveness will “perhaps be the difference between rotting in prison and healing in prison”. During his testimony before the Assize Court, he had already insisted on the energy that love gives in difficult times. “Life always gives us a choice. Do we sink into despair and the atrocities that humans are capable of or do we focus on the energy and love present all around us? “