2023-05-09 14:47:00
Summoned at 9:00 a.m., the witness only appeared after being called back by the registry. “Why didn’t you want to come? It’s mandatory,” reminded him of the president, Laurence Massart. “I have already testified” during the investigation, he replied. “I thought that was enough. I didn’t want to repeat that.” The president underlined his key role in the progress of the investigation, promising him that he could then “turn the page”.
Looking weary, the ex-driver – who opposed a “joker” to the president asking her about her current occupation – then returned to this disastrous race. He picked up the trio around 07:00 at number 4 rue Max Roos, in Schaerbeek. The 36-year-old remembers a voluble and relaxed “fat”, suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui, a tall, thin man identified as Najim Laachraoui, the second terrorist to blow himself up in the departures hall, and of a third passenger wearing a hat, Mohamed Abrini.
The three men load their luggage themselves into the trunk of the vehicle, without special precautions but “cleanly”, described the witness. However, he noticed a “sticky material”, as well as white powder on the bags of his customers. And a lingering chemical smell. “You can’t forget that smell. It was powerful.”
The trio then moved to the back. On the road, Ibrahim El Bakraoui starts the conversation with the driver. “What was he talking about?” asked the president. “Well, Americans,” let go of the witness with a chuckle. “Madam, bad things: that they are guilty, that they do what they want. (…) But, me, I did not want to dig the thing”, he added, Frowned eyebrows. The other two “never spoke to him. They were tense, that’s all”. “Maybe they were anticipating,” the witness surmised. “It’s after that we turn things around: we remember details and we think that’s why he was like that. But it’s too late.”
Once his passengers are deposited, the driver opens his windows wide on the highway to evacuate the smell. “My car stank badly, it was horrible.”
Still driving his taxi, he learns of the attacks through the news. According to “his intuition”, the witness went to the police around 8:30 a.m. to give a statement. This will allow you to quickly find the apartment where the explosives were made, and to get your hands on a computer with valuable information for the investigation. The taxi driver will also return several times to the police station on March 22 to provide details and draw a composite portrait, recalled the president of the court.
The latter then asked him if he recognized Mohamed Abrini, sitting in the dock. Glancing furtively at “the man in the hat”, the witness laughed lightly, perhaps embarrassed, and nodded. “Eyes,” he added. To a lawyer for the civil parties who was surprised that the driver could recognize the accused despite his headgear, “he hid his face but not his eyes”, replied the 30-year-old. “The eyes, all the same, are important when you stare at a person. You can’t forget certain looks.”
At the defense, Me Stanislas Eskenazi bounced back, recalling the words of the witness in reconstruction. “When leaving the airport, you say that Abrini’s eyes looked tired, moist. As if he had been crying,” quoted the lawyer for the now hatless man. “Yes, they were really red,” confirmed the taxi driver.
The parties also tried to determine whether Mohamed Abrini had acquiesced in the anti-American remarks made by Ibrahim El Bakraoui, or whether he had remained impassive. The prosecutor Bernard Michel pointed to the first hearing of the witness, who specifies that the man seated behind him was the one who nodded. “Yes, it was the man in the hat,” the driver confirmed to the audience, adding that he could see him through the mirror in the rear view mirror.
“During the reenactment, you said that the one with the hat had ‘said nothing’, you did not mention acquiescence”, opposed Me Eskenazi. To the vice-president of the court who questioned himself earlier on the same point, the witness had replied to remember “the acquiescence in the car”. “You know, when we make a statement, everything is fresh. We remember the moment,” said the driver. “Maybe if I read the deposition, I would remember it,” he concluded, trying to bring out memories swallowed up by seven years of proceedings.
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