Yemenia Airways crash: relatives of victims await answers from justice
Bahia Bakari was the sole survivor of the Yemenia Airways crash that killed 152 people.
AP - Francois Mori
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
The trial for involuntary homicides and injuries of the company Yemenia opened this Monday in Paris in the presence of a hundred relatives of the victims, nearly 13 years after the air disaster off the Comoros which killed 152 people and left a sole survivor.
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This first day was trying for the families of victims who came to attend this trial from Marseille, where a large Comorian community lives.
“
I am stressed, I am anxious.
I've been waiting for 13 years to finally know the truth and I want to mourn the death of my sister
, "says a relative of victims to our special correspondent at the Paris courthouse,
Sylvie Koffi
.
The one and only survivor, Bahia Bakari, also present in court, was 12 years old at the time of the accident.
She survived by clinging to debris from the plane, before being rescued by a fisherman.
Dressed Monday in a white blouse and a black jacket, she refused to speak to the press before the hearing.
► To read also: Thirteen years after the crash of the Yemenia Airways A310, the long-awaited trial opens in Paris
Alongside Bahia Bakari, seated in the front row and who is due to testify on May 23, nearly a hundred relatives of the victims took their places in the main courtroom.
For those unable to enter, two retransmission rooms have been opened within the confines of the judicial court and part of the trial is retransmitted in Marseille for those, many, who live in the region.
The defendants' bench remained empty
"
We expect from this trial that the truth be established, that this disaster which was announced and foreseeable, be judged and that there be a severe and above all very reasoned sanction against Yemenia
", declared in court Ibrahim Ahamada, who lost his wife and son in the crash.
Facing the civil parties, the bench of the defendants remained empty: no representative of the Yemeni national company is present at the hearing, because of the war which is tearing the country apart.
The challenge of this trial is to understand what happened on the night of June 29 to 30, 2009. Yemenia flight 626 crashed off the Comoros, just before landing in Moroni, with 11 on board crew members and 142 passengers, including 66 French.
For four weeks, French justice will examine suspicions of "failures and negligence" by Yemenia Airways, which operated the flight.
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