Lionel Gougelot 7:30 a.m., November 30, 2022

Six years after the attacks in Brussels, the trial begins in the Belgian capital.

A thousand civil parties and at least 370 witnesses expected.

On the side of the accused, they will be nine in the box.

For the families of the victims, the mourning is long and difficult.

Louis lost his partner in the Maalbeek metro explosion.

Europe 1 met him.

It was March 22, 2016. When he learned of the explosion in the Maalbeek metro, Louis immediately had a bad feeling.

He knows his girlfriend was there.

The places of the drama being forbidden to access, it is for him the beginning of a long wait.

"It happened on Tuesday and I had confirmation of his death on Saturday evening, so it took a while," he told Europe 1. "In terms of identification, this does not Wasn't obvious. She was so disfigured that maybe that's one of the things that made it take a little longer to identify her body."

post-traumatic depression

The investigation will show that the young woman was only a few meters away from the suicide bomber in the wagon.

That day, 32 people were killed and more than 300 were injured in the two successive attacks at Zaventem airport and in the metro.

Several months after the bereavement, Louis sinks into post-traumatic depression.

Crises of paranoia and psychiatric follow-up: the still traumatized young man now apprehends this trial with anguish.

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"Especially the face to face vis-à-vis the accused remains quite painful to consider," he said.

"For me, there is no possible forgiveness. And it's true that Salah Abdeslam's sentence in France was incompressible life. I hope that in Belgium there will be severity, yes."

They will be nine in the accused box, including Salah Abdeslam.

A trial which, he hopes despite everything, will allow him to turn the page and continue his reconstruction.