An army officer wept in court today as he described how his six-month old daughter died in his sweltering hot car after he forgot to drop her off at a creche.
The 33 year-old left his baby Victoria in his locked car outside work at NATO headquarters near Brussels in temperatures above 25C, a court heard.
After realising his mistake more than eight hours later, he made desperate attempts to resuscitate her but she had died of dehydration.
He told the court: 'I put her in the baby seat in the car as I did on every working day.
'But for some reason I don't know I clean forgot about her and drove straight to work without putting her in the creche.
'In the afternoon, I went to the car with a colleague to fetch something and I just didn't see her sitting there.
'After work, I went to the creche to pick her up and I didn't see her little coat.
'In that moment, I realised what had happened. I raced to the car. Victoria was still sitting there on the back seat. But it was too late.'
Frantically, the father and a friend tried in vain to resuscitate her.
But the little girl was dehydrated after more than eight hours in the sun.
In two similar cases in Belgium in 2007 and 2009 where forgotten children died in parked cars, no action was taken against the parents after prosecutors decided that they had suffered enough.
This is the believed to be the first time that a charge of causing death by negligence has been brought against a parent in such a case.
The father, named only as Lt Nicolas J under Belgian privacy laws, pleaded not guilty.
Defence lawyer Benjamine Bovy said his client was a 'victim' because memory is controlled by part of the brain over which an individual has no control, he argued.
'Compare this case with a bus driver who has a heart attack and causes an accident.
'He can't be charged because he has no control over his cardiac muscle.
'My client was in the same position. There was nothing he could do either to avoid this tragedy.'
But the prosecutor said: 'From a humane point of view this man should not be punished.
'But he made a mistake and this must be a warning. People should take care. That is why he has been charged.'
The court in Brussels will give a ruling on 13 October.
