ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A trial has begun in Belgium against a policeman who shot dead an Iraqi Kurdish toddler south of Brussels in 2018.

"If I'd known there was a child, I never would have pulled out my gun," Victor-Manuel Jacinto Goncalves, 48, said on Monday during a court hearing in the city of Mons, according to AFP.

Mawda Shawri, a two-year-old toddler from the Kurdistan Region, was shot dead by the policeman during a high-speed van chase in May 2018.

The van was taking migrants to a lorry park where they would board trucks to the United Kingdom.

Goncalves, who could face five years in jail for “involuntary homicide”, said he had intended to shoot the tyres of the vehicle, driven by suspected human traffickers, but the car swerved violently and the bullet hit Shawri in the head.

Mawda’s parents, from Ranya in the Kurdistan Region, ended up settling in Belgium after her death, granted leave to remain on humanitarian grounds.

Goncalves appeared in court alongside the van driver and the smuggler, both Iraqi Kurds.

"He feels that everything has fallen on him, that he has to carry the errors of the state prosecutors, of migration policy." Goncalves’ lawyer, Laurent Kennes told AFP.

"Before being a policeman, I'm a human being, I'm a dad," Goncalves told the court. "Mawda's death left me shattered.”

A “Justice for Mawda” campaign has been launched on Twitter, supported by various prominent figures including Princess Marie-Esmeralda of Belgium.

Migration has become a common occurrence among the Kurdish people searching for a better life.

According to The Summit Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs (Lutka), 564,273 people from the Kurdistan Region, the disputed territories, and other parts of Iraq, including men, women, children, and the elderly, have migrated abroad since the beginning of 2015.

Rudaw