None of the occupants of the aircraft, with the exception of a 12-year-old survivor, has ever been found. The trial of the crash of Yemenia flight 626 off the Comoros in 2009, which killed 152 people, including 66 French, opens from Monday, May 9 before the Paris Criminal Court. The Yemeni national company which used this A310 is judged thirteen years after the facts. Here is what you need to know about this legal meeting scheduled to last four weeks.
A crash just before landing
On the evening of June 29, 2009, Yemenia flight 626 was about to land in Moroni, the capital of the Comoros, an archipelago located between Mozambique and Madagascar, with 11 crew members and 142 passengers on board, including 66 French. Leaving from Paris or Marseille, they changed planes in Sanaa, Yemen.
A few kilometers from the coast, at 10:53 p.m. local time, it hit the Indian Ocean, engines at full power, before sinking into the water. Bahia Bakari, who was traveling with her mother, survived by clinging to debris at sea for eleven hours, before being rescued by a fishing boat the day after the crash, the most serious in the history of the Comoros.
Human error involved…
The black boxes are fished out a few weeks after the crash, but the investigation remains bogged down for a long time. The French authorities for a time criticized their Comorian counterparts for their non-cooperation, while the families of the victims accused Yemen of exerting pressure to prevent the questioning of its national company.
If the dilapidation of the planes of the Yemenia had been denounced for a long time by passengers, the investigations concluded that the state of the device, an Airbus which left the factory in 1990, was not in question – nor the weather, lightning or a missile.
According to the expert reports, based in particular on the flight recorders, the accident was due to the “inappropriate actions of the crew during the approach to Moroni airport, leading to the loss of control of the aircraft”.
… but Yemenia is judged for “manslaughter and manslaughter”
“Beyond these dramatic errors attributable to the pilots”the investigating magistrates considered that Yemenia had “failed in many respects”. He is accused of having maintained night flights to Moroni, despite the long-standing breakdowns of the airport beacon lights, as well as “shortcomings” in the training of pilots, qualified as “lacunary”.
Yemen Airways thus incurs a fine of 225,000 euros for homicides and involuntary injuries. The families will, however, face an empty bench of defendants: no representative of the company, which disputes everything “failure”should not move because of the war raging in Yemen, according to his lawyer, Leon-Lef Forster.
“Yemenia remains deeply marked by this disaster, in particular for the victims, nevertheless it protests its innocence by indicating that it is in no way responsible for the facts which occurred.argues the latter. There were malfunctions, but which are not attributable to him and which will appear during the hearing.”
Out of “1,000 rights holders”, 560 civil parties constituted
Some 560 people are civil parties, including many from the Marseille region (Bouches-du-Rhône), where many victims resided. The retransmission of the debates is planned for the judicial court of the Marseille city. “We are around 1,000 rights holders in this case” but “only the rights holders of French victims are represented. That is a very, very serious problem, it is not normal for some of the victims to be abandoned”regrets Said Assoumani, president of the association of victims.
Bahia Bakari, who lost her mother in the crash, is due to testify on May 23. In news reports and in a book, she described feeling, as she approached the airport, “turbulence”to have been like “electrified” then had a “black hole” before ending up in the water, where she heard “women screaming”. “For me it’s part of my destiny, and it was not my day”she testified to France 3.
The relatives of the victims have the “willingness to understand”notes Claude Lienhard, lawyer for civil parties. “Thirteen years is a long time: it’s exhausting psychologically and morally and even physicallyunderlines Said Assoumani. But after thirteen years of waiting and impatience, the criminal trial is finally here. For us, this is the main objective of our fight, it is the opportunity that will allow us to establish the different responsibilities at all levels”.
“It will be the trial of the ‘trash planes’, the trial of shortcomings, of irresponsibility, which means that, with the race for profits, we arrive at tragedies.”
Said Assoumani, president of the association of victimsat AFP
On a civilian level, “only two-thirds families of victims “have been compensated, which is scandalous”, denounce the association.