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PARIS , May 23 (AP) \u2014 The lone survivor of a 2009 plane crash in the Indian Ocean took the stand Monday in a Paris courtroom, recounting her ordeal as a 12-year-old girl hearing screams, clinging to floating debris and desperately hoping that her mother was still alive.<\/p>\n
Bahia Bakari\u2019s mother was among 152 people who died on the flight operated by Yemen Airways, which is now known as Yemenia.<\/p>\n
Composed throughout her testimony, Bakari cried as she mourned her mother\u2019s loss. Others in the courtroom broke down crying too.<\/p>\n
Bakari, dressed all in white and praised for her bravery by judges and lawyers, delivered powerful testimony in a room heavy with emotion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were landing, I started to feel some turbulence but people didn\u2019t seem worried about it. Then I felt an electrical shock and I woke up in the water. I don\u2019t remember what happened between sitting in the plane and being in the water. I have a black hole,\u201d Bakari said.<\/p>\n
Yemen\u2019s national carrier is charged with manslaughter and unintentional injuries over the crash, which occurred at 11:53 p.m., causing the deaths of 141 passengers and 11 crew members. Sixty-five of the dead were French citizens.<\/p>\n
Now 25, Bakari was 12 when she took the plane with her mother to go to Comoros off Africa\u2019s eastern coast to attend a wedding. The plane departed from Paris, made a stopover in the southern French city of Marseille and then landed in Sanaa. Bakari described switching to a smaller plane to go from the Yemeni capital to Moroni in the Comoros. It was a night flight and Bakari remembered that \u201ceveryone was exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the plane plunged into the ocean, she grasped a floating part of the destroyed plane and stayed in the water for 11 hours before being saved by fishermen.<\/p>\n
Bakari remembered hearing \u201cfemale voices which screamed for help in Comorian\u201d at first. She then fell asleep and woke up alone: \u201cIt was so long. I almost gave up. I almost lost hope. Thinking about my mom helped me to hold up. I convinced myself that everyone except me made it home safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the hours passed, she said, \u201cI lost track of time when I was in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
After her rescue, Bakari was taken to the Moroni hospital then repatriated to France. Bakari suffered a broken collarbone, a broken hip, burns and other injuries.<\/p>\n
Today, \u201cI don\u2019t suffer any physical effects, but my mother is gone. I was very close to her,\u201d she said, in tears.<\/p>\n
The young woman, who now works in real estate, has two younger siblings and relied mostly on her father who helped her deal with the trauma. She didn\u2019t seek therapy after leaving the hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t feel comfortable talking to a stranger. I was close with my family,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Bakari said she is \u201cdoing much better now,\u201d and resumed flying two years after the crash. She said she doesn\u2019t suffer traumatic flashbacks, but she isn\u2019t at ease in the water.<\/p>\n
Bakari couldn\u2019t attend her mother\u2019s funeral because she was still in the hospital, but said she considered herself lucky because her mother\u2019s body was identified, and she had a proper grave.<\/p>\n
Bakari, who describes herself as \u201ca proud Comorian,\u201d stood with the more than 250 plaintiffs, who mostly come from Comoros, in a packed courtroom. The trial was broadcast live in a courtroom in Marseille, where many victims came from.<\/p>\n
She co-wrote a book \u201cBahia, the Miracle Girl,\u201d and told the court she did it for the victim\u2019s\u2019 relatives, to \u201cleave them something to hold on to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the pain of reliving the memories, she said she felt relieved to have a trial, even so many years later.<\/p>\n
In 2015, the airline was ordered in civil proceedings by two French courts to pay more than 30 million euros ($31.6 million) to the victims\u2019 families, who deplored the slowness of the procedure between France and Comoros, a former colony that became independent in 1975.<\/p>\n
In 2018, a confidential agreement was signed between the airline and 835 beneficiaries, who had to wait several more years to receive compensation.<\/p>\n
No representatives of the company attended the Paris trial. Bakari deplored the absence and said she wishes the company would apologize.<\/p>\n
The trial ends on June 2. The airline faces a fine of up to 225,000 euros ($237,000).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS , May 23 (AP) \u2014 The lone survivor of a 2009 plane crash in the Indian Ocean took the stand Monday in a Paris courtroom, recounting her ordeal as a 12-year-old girl hearing screams, clinging to floating debris and desperately hoping that her mother was still alive. Bahia Bakari\u2019s mother was among 152 people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-191481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}