• The trial of the airline Yemenia, returned to justice after the crash of a plane in 2009 in the Indian Ocean which had made 152 dead, must open this Monday at the Paris Criminal Court.

  • On June 30, 2009, a Yemenia Airways Airbus A310 crashed into the sea off Moroni, the capital of the Comoros, shortly before landing.

    Only a teenager, Bahia Bakari, had survived by remaining hung for eleven hours on a piece of debris from the aircraft.

  • At the end of a long investigation, the company was sent back to court for manslaughter and involuntary injuries, in particular for having "maintained night flights from Moroni despite the malfunctioning of the airport lights" and for not having "provided its pilots with sufficient training".

“And there I have a black hole.

I wake up in the water, in the open sea”.

Almost thirteen years after the Yemenia Airways Airbus A310 crash, in which 151 of the 152 passengers perished, Bahia Bakara, the sole survivor, will once again tell her story.

But this time, it will not be in front of the investigators or on a television set but at the bar of the Paris Criminal Court.

The airline is on trial from May 9 to June 2 for manslaughter and involuntary injury.

It was a little after 10:30 p.m. on June 30, 2009, when Yemenia Airways flight 626 began its descent towards Moroni, in the Comoros.

Bahia Bakari, then 12 years old, is seated next to her mother.

"The plane began to shake oddly," she said during the instruction.

The little girl is electrified.

“It came suddenly, I don't know if it was lightning that struck”.

What follows is mysterious.

Bahia wakes up in the water, "without remembering what happened".

She clings to a fragment of the device, hears women's voices screaming, calling for help, and goes back to sleep alone, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

She will stay there for 11 hours.

Miraculously, a fishing boat spotted her in the early morning.

She was only slightly injured – a broken collarbone and burns to her knees – but her mother did not survive the crash.

A lack of cooperation which hampered the investigation

If Bahia Bakari, as well as the 400 people who have joined as civil parties – mainly families of victims – are impatiently awaiting the trial, it is because it took thirteen long years of investigation for the Yemeni company to be referred to the justice.

In question, according to the French authorities, the lack of cooperation of their Comorian and Yemeni counterparts their non-cooperation.

Since the start of the investigation, the families of victims have repeatedly denounced the "slowness" of the procedure, accusing Yemen of putting pressure so that its national company is not implicated.

The black boxes, however, were quickly recovered and made it possible to eliminate the thesis of a failure of the device.

The Bureau of Investigations and Analysis for Civil Aviation (BEA) believes that the crash was due to two reasons: the landing strip was not lit - the plane therefore began its descent in the dark, in the middle of mountainous terrain, with strong winds – and the lack of proper pilot training.

"The crew whose attention was focused on managing the aircraft's trajectory and locating the runway probably did not have the mental resources sufficiently available in this stressful situation to react" to the fact that they were flying too low, writes the BEA,

The families of the victims - 141 passengers and 11 crew members, mostly Comorians and French - hope that the responsibility of the company will be recognized: "It was a foreseeable accident, the pilots were not trained correctly and the plane should not have landed that evening, at night, on this runway which was not lit, ”said Me Claude Lienhard, one of the lawyers for the civil parties.

Among them, 200 people should make the trip to Paris, from Marseille where they live.

Twenty, including Bahia Bakari, are expected to take the stand.

A trial without airline representatives

For its part, the Yemeni company, which refutes the accusations, is waiting for "justice to recognize the fact that it is not involved in the responsibility for this disaster", she declared through her lawyer, Mr. Léon-Lef Forster, recalling that it is "the first fatal accident since the creation in 1963 of the airline, which is undoubtedly marked by this tragedy".

For the company, certain causes were not taken into consideration, continues the lawyer who affirms that the crew was not correctly warned of the adverse weather conditions and the absence of signal lights on the runway. originally planned landing.

“It is not a desire to disempower, but it is a way of ensuring that the real causes are clarified”, adds Me Léon-Lef Forster.

The families of victims will however have to do without the representatives of the company Yemenia Airways, who will not make the trip for the trial.

“It is not that the company does not wish to be present, but a displacement of the current leader was not possible”, assures the council.

And to clarify: “It would not have brought much.

He was not on duty at the time of the crash.

".

An absence very badly experienced by the victims, according to Me Claude Lienhard: “We highlight the war, but we do not really believe in it, if they had wanted to come, they could have.

It's a lack of respect ".

Marseilles

Marseille: Yemenia ordered to pay more than 30 million euros to the families of the victims

World

The Yemenia company will not be part of the blacklist

  • Justice

  • Comoros

  • Yemenia

  • crash yemenia

  • Crash

  • Plane crash

  • Court case