Noon, 8 September 2021. Central Paris, Île de la Cité. The trial that will get beneath approach at the moment won’t be the Nuremberg of terrorism, as some have mentioned: whereas excessive Nazi dignitaries had been placed on trial in Nuremberg, right here the defendants are second stringers, since those that did the killing are useless. Nonetheless, this trial too will likely be huge, unprecedented, one thing I need to witness. With out being a specialist in Islam – not to mention in Arab research – I’m taken with religions, their pathological mutations and the query: the place does this pathology start? With regards to God, the place does the insanity begin? What goes on in these guys’ minds? However the principle purpose I need to spend a 12 months attending this trial is that a whole lot of human beings will describe the expertise of getting lived by way of the evening of 13 November 2015, when Islamic State fighters killed 130 folks on the Stade de France, the Bataclan and on the cafe terraces in jap Paris and wounded a whole lot extra. Those that survived the assault or survived their family members, will stand earlier than us and converse. Day in, time out, we are going to hear excessive experiences of loss of life and life, and I feel that between the time we first enter this courtroom and after we go away it for good, one thing in all of us can have shifted floor. We don’t know what we’re ready for; we don’t know what’s going to occur. We go in.
At 12.25pm a tremor runs by way of the courtroom. Closely escorted by gendarmes, the accused enter the bulletproof field. Most of what we see is the reflection within the glass, and never the defendants behind it. We arise, crane our necks, and marvel: is he there? Sure, he’s. Salah Abdeslam is there. He’s the one within the black polo shirt, the furthest from us, the one surviving member of the group of fighters. If he’s behind the field it’s to not stop us from seeing him however as a result of they’re seated in alphabetical order. He’s the primary in an extended collection of A’s: Abdeslam, Abrini, Amri, Attou, Ayari. A bell rings shrilly and a voice says: “All rise.” Everybody stands, as if at mass. The presiding decide and the 4 assistant judges are available in and take their seats. With a touch of a Marseille accent, the presiding decide says: “Please be seated, the court docket is now in session.” It’s begun.
Abdeslam is the star of the trial. Born and raised in Molenbeek, a district of Brussels reputed to be a haven for radicalised Muslims, he’s the youthful brother of Brahim Abdeslam, who blew himself up on the brasserie Le Comptoir Voltaire. Salah was alleged to blow himself up as nicely, and it’s unclear whether or not his explosive belt didn’t go off or if he thought higher of it on the final minute. Solely he can say. Will he?
In the course of the six years that the investigation has been beneath approach, Abdeslam has refused to utter a lot as a phrase, and the query on everybody’s lips on the primary day of the trial is: will he persist in his silence? In that case, the trial will lose its fascination. We lay odds; most of my colleagues on the press bench are pessimistic. The roll name begins with him, respecting alphabetical order. The presiding decide asks him to face and state his civil standing. Will he stand? Will he reply? He stands up. A youthful determine, his face is essentially coated by his Covid masks and the Salafist beard beneath it. Earlier than any questions will be requested he recites in a loud voice the shahada, the grand, sober Islamic creed: “There is no such thing as a God however Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.” A second goes by. “Effectively,” says the presiding decide, “we’ll see about that sooner or later. The names of your father and mom?” “My father’s and mom’s names are not any enterprise of this court docket.” “Career?” “Islamic State fighter.” The decide seems to be at his notes and says placidly: “It says right here: non permanent employee.”
On the second day, whereas the plaintiffs had been nonetheless coming ahead, it was introduced that the victims’ testimonies would quickly be heard. Abruptly, Abdeslam stood up within the field, made indicators till his microphone was turned on, and requested if we’d even be listening to from those that had been bombed in Syria and Iraq. That might be mentioned sooner or later, the presiding decide responded, and switched off his microphone.
On the whole, the remark was seen as a provocation. Nonetheless, it left me considering. It invokes the so-called “defence of rupture”, launched in 1987 by the massively provocative lawyer Jacques Vergès in the course of the trial of the Nazi officer Klaus Barbie. Granted, mentioned Vergès, Barbie tortured prisoners in Lyon in the course of the German occupation of France, however the French military did the identical in Algeria within the 60s. So each time the subject of torture in Lyon was introduced up, Vergès’ defence targeted on the torture in Algeria.
Whereas I might be shocked if Olivia Ronen, Abdeslam’s very younger lawyer, went so far as emulating Vergès, it’s true that the French military tortured in Algeria, even when that doesn’t put it on a par with the SS. And it’s true that the worldwide coalition to which France belonged dropped bombs on Iraq – and on Syria beginning in 2014 – inflicting dozens, maybe a whole lot, of civilian casualties. I used to be all of the extra shocked whereas going over the order of indictment – which everybody agrees is rigorous and very nicely put collectively – to discover a reference to “alleged civilian massacres mentioned to be dedicated by the west in the midst of the bombings”. I’m no professional, nevertheless, it serves neither the reality nor justice to name indeniable civilian massacres “alleged civilian massacres”. Nor does it serve the pursuits of justice and fact to disclaim that Abdeslam’s situations of detention are extraordinarily harsh. Six years in solitary confinement is harsh certainly, as Ronen underscored on the first listening to. The younger man who had simply entered the field like a bull within the enviornment had hardly spoken to anybody for six years, she mentioned, and it was her responsibility to say so.
I listened to her, I agreed along with her, on the identical time I assumed concerning the e-mail that Frank Berton, Abdeslam’s earlier lawyer, obtained after complaining that his shopper was beneath round the clock video surveillance:
Expensive sir,
Ever since her night on the Bataclan, my daughter-in-law has additionally been beneath video surveillance 24 hours a day, within the hospital.
This case doesn’t hassle her, as a result of she’s in a deep coma.
Nor does it hassle my son, who lies within the cemetery.
I respect your work and your convictions, however there are limits when confronted with folks’s struggling.
Those who attended the Charlie Hebdo trial in 2020 won’t neglect the trauma of the images taken on the crime scene. The newsroom, the our bodies. After which the surveillance video. The doorway corridor, the assassins getting into, one of many two Kouachi brothers standing guard whereas the opposite kills: one minute and forty-nine seconds that many would somewhat not have seen.
In settlement with the presiding decide, the cops who sketched a kind of stock of the crime scenes all through the second week of V13, shorthand for Vendredi 13 (Friday thirteenth), made the alternative selection: to spare the plaintiffs and maintain what they confirmed to a minimal. Photographs, however taken from a distance. Charts and diagrams. The devastated however empty terrace of the cafe Le Carillon. A litany of names, chalk outlines on the pavements, numbered yellow or blue markers referred to as ID tents, however no bloody our bodies. Comparatively few photos, hardly any sound. And but there are audio recordsdata. A spectator on the Bataclan was capturing the live performance on a digital recorder which was later discovered. It stored recording all in the course of the bloodbath, leading to an audio tape which, from the arrival of the terrorist commando to the ultimate police assault, lasts two hours, thirty-eight minutes and forty-seven seconds.
The query naturally arose as as to whether it needs to be performed to these current. Right here, too, the court docket determined in favour of discretion, enjoying solely the primary twenty-two seconds. The band Eagles of Loss of life Steel performs. The primary gunshots mix in with the drums. Suggestions screeches, the sound is instantly minimize. In the course of the break, a younger girl who was on the Bataclan that evening advised me what she had a proper to say and I didn’t: “That wasn’t sufficient. If it was supposed to offer any thought of what it was like in there, it’s not sufficient. It’s nearly as good as nothing.” I don’t know. In per week’s time, others who had been there’ll start to place phrases to what it was like.
Within the meantime, the investigator who made the preliminary findings testifies. He’s a police officer who should have seen quite a bit in his 20 years within the drive, however he trembled as he spoke. “What you didn’t hear,” he mentioned, “the remaining two hours, thirty-eight minutes and twenty-five seconds, was transcribed by an officer, phrase for phrase, sound for sound, shot for shot – 258 pictures in bursts of fireside after which shot by shot for the primary thirty-two minutes.”
How lengthy it took the officer to do that is unclear. One would somewhat not think about what his nights had been like. And for the reason that killers spoke originally, and for the reason that court docket needed to hear their phrases with out listening to the tape, it was the police officer himself, Patrick Bourbotte, who learn them out. He mentioned: “I’ll have to talk the terrorists’ phrases. It’s not the simplest factor I’ve needed to do in my profession as a judicial police officer.” His voice shook, then he took a gulp of air and commenced to learn, bravely, altering his voice like an apprentice actor as he learn the elements of “assailant primary” Fouad Mohamed Aggad, “assailant quantity two” Omar Ismail Mostefai and “assailant quantity three” Samy Amimour:
“ … You may blame your president François Hollande … He’s enjoying the cowboy, like in a western, bombing our brothers in Syria and Iraq, we’re right here to pay you again … “
“We troopers of the caliphate are all over the place on the planet. We’ll strike all over the place … ”
“Hey, you, don’t transfer.”
A shot.
“I mentioned, don’t transfer.”
The video put out by Islamic State claiming duty for the assaults could be proven, nevertheless. In an expurgated model. However expurgated or not, its sheer atrocity leaves one speechless. Filmed, edited and set to music like a Hollywood blockbuster or a online game, it reveals the “9 lions of the caliphate” – the long run Paris suicide bombers – coaching on a rocky panorama, in all probability someplace in Syria, in the summertime of 2015. They know that in a couple of months’ time they’ll kill and die.
For now, they’re beheading prisoners. One every. And never solely are they beheading them, some snigger as they do it. Nevertheless terrible its message could also be, propaganda typically presents a virtuous face. Processions, younger folks gazing stalwartly in the direction of a radiant future. Nazi propaganda didn’t present Auschwitz, Stalinist propaganda didn’t present the gulag, Khmer Rouge propaganda didn’t present the S-21 torture centre. Usually propaganda hides horror. Right here it places it on present. Islamic State doesn’t say: that is conflict, sadly for good to triumph we should commit horrible acts. No, it lauds itself for its sadism. It makes use of sadism, shows of sadism and the permission to be sadistic to recruit.
This trial has the colossal ambition of looking for to unfold, over a interval of 9 months, from each angle, from the perspective of everybody concerned, what occurred that evening. The primary two weeks had been spent inventorying the scenario. Cops, gendarmes, docs got here and described what that they had seen. These hardened males wept as they spoke. Now we’re getting into a brand new part. For the subsequent 5 weeks we’ll hear the testimonies of the plaintiffs, that’s, of the survivors and the kinfolk of the useless. These to whom this factor occurred. The testimonies are frighteningly intense, and there are about 15 of them a day. They began 4 days in the past – it feels prefer it’s been a month already.
The hearings begin at 12.30pm and are supposed to finish at 7.30pm, although they usually last more. And because it’s sophisticated to depart the constructing as a result of you must undergo the safety verify once more if you come again in, we hardly see the sunshine of day: at 6pm, it may simply as nicely be 3am. Different issues fade away. Planning dinner with pals could be unimaginable.
The presiding decide, whose affable firmness we’ve come to understand, made a slip of the tongue for which he instantly apologised: in order to not burden the court docket and to “keep away from repetition”, he mentioned, the plaintiffs’ legal professionals ought to talk to one another and their shoppers. Simply what would that imply, to “keep away from repetition”? After all, there are issues that each one those that had been on the terraces – since we’re coping with the terraces this week – say. That they first thought it was firecrackers, then that they had been caught in a settling of scores, earlier than greedy the loopy reality: males with weapons of conflict had acquired out of a automotive to kill them. That when it stopped, when the automotive had left, there was what we typically unthinkingly name a deathly silence, solely it actually was a deathly silence: solely after a while did the screaming begin. That it was sheer carnage, a butchery, a tangle of our bodies with large holes out of which blood, flesh and organs oozed, and that when the primary support employees arrived they repeated: “First see to the residing.”
However there isn’t any repetition and there can’t be any both, as a result of everybody skilled these identical moments with their very own historical past, their very own issues, their very own deaths – and so they’re now describing them in their very own phrases. They’re not information that may be reeled off, however voices that unfold, and all of them – nicely, virtually all of them – ring true. Nearly all of them have the accent of fact. That’s what makes this lengthy string of testimonies not solely horrible but in addition magnificent, and it isn’t out of morbid curiosity that we who comply with the trial wouldn’t commerce locations for something on the planet, and even consider lacking a day.
I’ve learn, heard and typically thought that we reside in a sufferer society, one which is completely satisfied to confuse the standing of sufferer and hero. Which may be; nonetheless numerous the victims we hear from day after day do strike me as heroes. Due to the braveness it took them to rebuild their lives, their way of life this expertise and the power of the ties that bind them to the useless and to the residing. On rereading these traces I realise that they sound overblown, however I don’t know the way to say it in any other case: as these younger folks – as a result of sure, virtually all of them are younger – take the stand one after the subsequent, we see their souls. And we come out grateful, shocked and feeling as if we now have matured with them.
Clarisse: “What I like at concert events is folks’s faces. That evening, the faces had been completely satisfied, everybody was in a improbable temper. The vitality was nice.” Aurélie: “The pit was full, perhaps 1,000 folks, as quickly because the firing began we acquired crushed towards the limitations. I used to be hit by a bullet, I don’t know which of the three shot it.” Lydia: “I used to be going through the stage and will see the musicians. I noticed how panicked they had been, I noticed them working backstage. At first I assumed: some nutcase has come to shoot on the crowd.” Clarisse: “I attempted to imagine: we’re being taken hostage, if we do what they need it’ll be OK. However no, after a few seconds it was clear that they had been right here to kill us and I assumed: that is completely loopy, I’m going to die on the live performance of some California rednecks that price me 30 euros and 70 cents to get into.” Thibault: “I threw my spouse on the bottom and jumped on high of her, everybody within the pit was mendacity down. After the primary bursts of gunfire I noticed a man with a giant construct firing in the direction of the bottom. He moved ahead calmly, a step or two, a shot, a step or two, a shot. He wasn’t carrying a face masks. It was then, once I noticed that his face was uncovered, that I realised we had been all going to die. I assumed: that is it, right here, now. This breath is my final. The one thought that eased my thoughts considerably was that I didn’t have any youngsters.” Amandine: “They’d turned on all of the lights and had been taking pictures folks, I’d say with a sure relish.” Édith: “They had been very younger, calm. At one level, one of many killers’ rifles should have acquired jammed and one other helped him unjam it with a joke, like buddies at a taking pictures vary.” Pierre-Sylvain: “They stopped to reload and after that they slowed down: bullet by bullet, taking purpose. A shout a shot, a sob a shot, a ringtone a shot.” Édith: “A person stood up and mentioned: ‘Cease it, what are you doing?’ One of many killers shot him.” Helen: “I heard him say: ‘There, that’s for our brothers in Syria, should you don’t prefer it speak to your President Hollande.’ I don’t have the primary thought what’s occurring in Syria, I’m right here to have enjoyable with Nick, the love of my life, and I ask Nick: ‘Have you ever been hit?’ Sure, within the abdomen, he’s in ache, he’s having hassle respiration so I breathe into his mouth and he dies.” Édith: “I managed to stand up to the balcony, the place a man within the again row hid me beneath the seat.” Bruno: “I used to be carrying a white T-shirt, I weighed 120kg, a sitting duck. I lay in entrance of Édith, considering perhaps it could defend her.” Édith: “I may hear the killing, curled up behind Bruno within the foetal place, ready to die. I noticed the door open on the different finish of the balcony. The man was three or 4 metres away, very calm, carrying white trainers.” Bruno: “I assumed to myself: hey, he’s cool, he seems to be calm. Then he raises his gun and begins taking pictures down into the pit.” Édith: “A good friend of Bruno’s came visiting and mentioned issues had been calming down, now was the time to flee. Bruno mentioned I ought to include them. I advised him I couldn’t transfer and he mentioned: ‘OK, I’ll stick with you.’ And he stayed with me. An ideal stranger. Kudos, Bruno.”
According to a merciless aphorism, all of us have power sufficient to bear the misfortunes of others. That is true, but even within the ranks of the observers – who when all is alleged and finished don’t have anything extra to do than hear and transcribe – we begin feeling worse and worse. We sleep much less and fewer nicely. We’ve got nightmares, we develop irritable. And an increasing number of usually, as soon as we’re at residence, with out having seen it coming, we weep (and goodness is aware of, I’m not a giant weeper).
Everyone right here initiatives themselves into the accounts we hear, however every differently. Typically it’s a query of age. I’m 63, it’s been a very long time since I’ve been to a rock live performance, my probabilities of having been on the Bataclan that evening are nearly as good as zero. My sons had been 28 and 25 in 2015, they may have been there. Greater than with the murdered younger folks themselves, I determine with their mother and father. With Georges Salines, whose daughter Lola was killed on the Bataclan.
A lean retired physician, Salines seems to be like a marathon runner. The truth is, he’s a marathon runner. He involves the trial on daily basis, and over the previous weeks he’s merely turn out to be Georges to me, one of many few folks I’ve befriended on this journey. We meet within the recesses in entrance of the one espresso machine, which is both utterly surrounded or out of order. And though the benches for the journalists are separated from these of the plaintiffs, and the gendarmes do their finest to make sure that everybody stays in their very own part, we typically cheat and sit collectively, and touch upon the listening to in hushed voices.
The final time Georges noticed his daughter was on the day of the assault, at lunchtime. He had deliberate to make use of the break to go swimming on the Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool, close to his workplace within the thirteenth arrondissement. Leaving the workplace, he ran into Lola, who was going to lunch along with her colleague Manon. They hugged and exchanged a couple of phrases. Lola mentioned she’d see if she may come over for lunch on the weekend. She didn’t point out that she was going to the Bataclan that evening, solely her brother knew. When the information broke, they tried to reassure one another with statistics: 1,500 folks had been on the Bataclan, and the variety of victims was being put within the dozens. Probabilities had been vastly in favour of her popping out unscathed. At a pinch, they had been prepared to concede that she might be injured, however not overly. For pity’s sake, not overly.
Georges by no means went again to the Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool. In January 2016, he co-founded the victims’ affiliation 13-onze-15. In reminiscence of Lola he wrote a good looking e-book of affection and grief, then he co-wrote one other, which shocked the group of victims as a result of it’s a dialogue with Azdyne Amimour, the daddy of Samy Amimour, the terrorist who blew himself up on the stage of the Bataclan. It’s not the simplest factor on the planet to confess that executioners’ youngsters should not accountable for the crimes of their fathers. However as for his or her mother and father … Georges says that their ache should even be heard. He says you could’t battle barbarism with barbarism, and that what justifies a trial of this scope is its scrupulous respect for authorized norms and rules.
Georges advocates what’s often called restorative justice. Developed along with the First Nations in North America, in South Africa after apartheid and within the wake of the Rwandan genocide, restorative justice includes fostering dialogue between victims and perpetrators, if each events so want: when the trials have ceased and with no speak of punishment, publicity or witnesses apart from the jail guards, the one goal being for every individual to inform their very own fact and begin placing their life again collectively, if doable.
Listening to Georges, I keep in mind what Abdeslam mentioned a couple of days earlier. One thing like: “Sure, it’s a disgrace that there have been Muslims among the many victims. That’s not what we wished.” When the remark raised a hue and cry, Abdesalam mentioned that folks weren’t attempting arduous sufficient to know him, and that they need to “go away the doorways of dialogue open”. For a lot of, myself included, that took the biscuit. Coming from him, I discovered such an announcement as embarrassing as when Adolf Eichmann mentioned he want to discover peace together with his former enemies, or when Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Entrance in the course of the second world conflict, was satisfied that with a little bit goodwill and supplied everybody acknowledged their wrongs, a “conciliation committee” consisting of Jewish survivors and Nazi criminals may assist everybody begin over once more on a brand new footing.
Georges will not be of my opinion. He additionally needs to depart the doorways of dialogue open. He’s not solely able to trade views with the daddy of one among his daughter’s three killers, I feel he’d be prepared to speak with the killer himself if he weren’t useless. And if Abdeslam leaves the doorways open to him, he’ll take him up on it.
Three days after Georges Salines’ testimony it’s the flip of Patrick Jardin, a large, graceless man who begins by congratulating the police particular commander for killing that “scum” Samy Amimour and saying that folks like Salah Abdeslam needs to be shot. OK, the loss of life penalty not exists, which is a pity, however at the least these vermin must rot in jail for the remainder of their lives earlier than they burn in hell.
“Folks say I’m stuffed with hatred, your honour, and it’s true. I do hate, and what disgusts me probably the most are the mother and father of victims who don’t. That man who wrote a e-book with the daddy of one of many terrorists makes me puke.”
Clearly, we who hearken to Jardin can not condemn this man who has misplaced his daughter. Nonetheless, the flood of archaic fury that gushes from his mouth makes us uneasy. Studying to substitute regulation for retaliation, justice for revenge, is what we name civilisation. And Georges is an eminently civilised man, somebody I want to emulate if such a misfortune befell me.
Nonetheless, earlier than we will overcome this archaic fury we should recognise that it exists – as a result of it should exist, in any other case we wouldn’t be human. Antoine Leiris, a younger man whose spouse was killed on the Bataclan, wrote a transferring e-book, Vous N’aurez Pas Ma Haine (You Will Not Have My Hate), whose title has turn out to be a slogan. Though I love the dignity of those that repeat this slogan in court docket, saying that they don’t really feel anger, that each one they need is a good trial, that to cry vengeance is to concede victory to the killers, first off it strikes me as too unanimous and virtuous to be solely sincere. Secondly, I can’t assist considering that they’re far too fast in silencing the Patrick Jardin inside themselves, and that if at the least one time in each 250 we hear this sullen, unforgiving voice, it’s a very good factor. “They are saying I’m on the far proper, and perhaps I’m, I don’t know, however even when I’m on the far proper, does that make my daughter any much less useless?”
Right up till the top of the trial, survivors who selected to not testify within the autumn have the appropriate to alter their minds and be heard. About 80 have signed as much as take the stand. At one level I had a horrible thought: should you had been to make a movie concerning the trial, these are scenes you’d need to minimize. Not as a result of they’re dangerous, however as a result of they’re redundant. We’ve seen all of it, heard all of it earlier than, they add nothing.
However actually that’s not true. Amongst different audio system I consider this younger man who was 21 on the time, and who got here out of the Bataclan unscathed. For 3 years he was completely disconnected. No reminiscences. Solely a malaise, the impression that folks checked out him surprisingly. Darkish however obscure concepts. Nightmares with out photos. Vague silhouettes on the sting of his imaginative and prescient. A perpetual hangover that he cures with alcohol. The sensation that he’s finished one thing unsuitable, however what? It slips away.
After three years, he does EMDR remedy, a therapy involving fast eye actions now used for all the things however which was invented for sufferers affected by post-traumatic stress. Abruptly, all the things comes again. He is aware of what he did unsuitable.
To achieve the exit he pushed, crushed and trampled his approach by way of the group. He turned a survival machine that didn’t give a toss about the rest. He used the folks he held probably the most dearly as human shields, simply to remain alive. So he lives, sure, however he lives a broken life. Others had been heroes, he was not. Time and again he sees himself pushing, crushing, trampling. This movie will run again and again in his head till the day he dies. He’s ashamed. That’s why he’s right here. To ask forgiveness from these he trampled underfoot. If one among them is right here to listen to him, at the least that’s one thing. He sobs. He leaves. I go away, too: sufficient for at the moment.
The subsequent day a lawyer good friend tells me I missed one thing – that’s a rule of thumb in court docket reporting: you at all times miss one thing if you determine to depart. Proper after the younger man racked with guilt, it was the flip of one other Bataclan survivor. Way more relaxed, he started his testimony by saying that he had simply heard the younger man converse earlier than him, and wished to inform him this: somebody stepped on me and I had two damaged ribs. Simply two damaged ribs. Perhaps it was you who stepped on me, perhaps it was another person, we’ll by no means know. But when it was you, it is best to know: two damaged ribs isn’t any huge deal. I acquired over it, I’m alive, I’m completely satisfied, I don’t blame you, you probably did what you would, all of us did what we may, I hope you’re nonetheless right here to listen to this.
The younger man was gone, however my lawyer good friend ran out into the corridor to search for him. She caught up with him outdoors on the steps of the Palais de Justice. If we had been making a movie, we’d cease at this picture.
That is an edited extract from V13: Chronicle of a Trial, translated by John Lambert. Printed by Fern Press, an imprint of Classic