Mohamed Abrini, Yassine Attar, Hamza Attou, Mohamed Bakkali, Sofien Ayari and Abdellah Chouaa . . . those accused of involvement in the November 2015 Paris attacks continue to give evidence about their personal backgrounds, a litany of small-scale crime and human tragedy.
For the moment, the question of religion is not being examined. The court has decided that that should wait until the alleged crimes of the 14 accused are being considered, a stage of the trial scheduled for early next year.
This week, we are being offered a glimpse of the family background, childhood, schooldays, professional career and police record of each man. The stories are remarkably similar, far less grim than a criminal sociologist might have imagined. And there are moments of revelation.
Mohamed Abrini, who is now 36 years old, described his life in the Brussels' suburb of Molenbeek as a series of failures.
At school, as a footballer, as a businessman, as a gambler, he never reached the required level. Even his career as a criminal was a flop, leading to twelve convictions and a sequence of prison sentences for relatively minor breaches of the law. Abrini would qualify as a delinquent, hardly a criminal.
And then his "little brother, Souleymane, was killed in Syria," shot in the head while fighting for Islamic State. "He was the best of us," said Abrini of the brother born nine years after himself.
His own departure for the Syrian jihad thus became inevitable: "We saw the war, the war, the war on TV all the time. When I saw the photo of my little brother with a hole in his head, I had no choice . . ."
But he denies direct involvement in the Paris attacks. "I didn't kill anyone, I didn't organise anything, I wasn't there on 13 November."
Accused because of family links
Yassine Atar also had a happy chioldhood in Molenbeek, also lost a brother in Syria.
He claims he has been wrongly accused and was arrested and charged simply because his cousins, the El Bakraoui brothers, and Yassine Atar's older brother, Oussama, since believed dead in Syria, are suspected of having masterminded the Paris attacks.
"It's because of my family links that I'm here."
Hamza Attou also came from a stable, happy background. His links with the Abdeslam brothers were those of an employee towards his employers: he sold cannabis and did odd jobs in the café run by Brahim Abdeslam in order to finance his own consumption, which ran to 5 grammes daily.
He is accused of helping Salah Abdeslam return to Belgium in the wake of the Paris attacks. He faces six years in jail if found guilty.
Quiet childhood in a stable family
Mohamed Bakkali told the court he had a "quiet childhood in a stable family," describing himself as an adolescent "a bit like everybody else".
But things went wrong in secondary school, and the world of criminality beckoned.
In the course of his career as a producer and seller of fake goods . . . "sneakers, watches, perfumes" . . . Bakkali came in contact with the El Bakraoui brothers, suspected of having supplied arms and explosives to the Paris terrorists, before themselves dying in the Brussels' airport and metro suicide attacks in 2016.
Sofien Ayari gave up a stable middle-class family existence in Tunisia to join the jihad in Syria. He was arrested at the same time as Salah Abdeslam.
Abdellah Chouaa's father is an imam in Molenbeek. His parents divorced in 2011; his father tried to impose an arranged marriage on Chouaa when he was 18; the young man refused. His legal history is a question of speeding fines and one drug-related offence.
He is accused of having helped the November 2015 terrorists to find and rent temporary lodgings.
The trial continues.
