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Hundreds of civil parties were invited to appear before the Paris Criminal Court today for a first hearing.
Some lost their entire families in this disaster. Others, scarred for life, live with indelible grief. Many indirect victims have since passed away without ever receiving any answers.
I represent several members of passengers’ families in this case.
This matter is exceptional both in terms of the disaster it caused for the victims’ families and the extraordinarily and abnormally long duration of the investigation, which forces us to confront the limitations of the judicial system and the imperative need for justice to be commensurate with the life of a man or a woman.
Twenty-two years separate this accident from this very first hearing. An entire generation. And while the proceedings are slowly moving forward, some survivors have not lived long enough or will not live long enough to see the verdict in this never-ending case.
Such a delay raises a fundamental question: what remains of the promise of justice when the wait stretches over more than two decades?
In a state governed by the rule of law, the passage of time should not erode the duty to account for the damage caused. Yet in cases of such gravity, each additional year becomes an obstacle to recovery, a form of institutional oblivion.