14 of the accused are to be present during the trial, including Salah Abdeslam, who is the only surviving attacker. The trial will last until the end of May 2022. 145 days have been set aside for hearings with about 330 lawyers, 300 survivors, and testimonies from, among others, then President François Hollande.
– Arthur Denouveaux is the leader of the survivors’ organization “Life for Paris”. REUTERS
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The trial after the traumatic jihadist attacks, which were planned from Syria, is unparalleled in scope. The court documents run to about one million pages in 542 volumes, which amounts to about 53 shelf meters.
– Everyone has their own expectations, but we know that this is an important milestone for the rest of our lives, says Arthur Denouveaux.
He survived the attack on the Bataclan concert arena, and heads the organization for the survivors, Life for Paris. Next to Bataclan, several nightclubs and a stadium were also attacked.
Six are convicted in their absence
31-year-old Abdeslam escaped the scene after throwing off a belt with a suicide bomb, which did not work.
He was arrested four months later in his hometown of Brussels. Abdeslam has refused to cooperate with the investigation in France, and was largely silent during another trial in Belgium in 2018.
He then claimed that he “only trusted Allah” and believed the court prejudged him. One of the big questions in the trial is whether Abdeslam will speak when he goes to court in January.
Another important question during the trial is how a group of jihadists entered France without being detected. Allegedly, they have hidden among the large masses of refugees from Islamic State in Syria.
The other 13 defendants who are expected to appear in court are accused of everything from participating in the planning of the attack and to having provided logistical support for violations of the Firearms Act.
Six of the accused will be convicted in their absence, of which five are believed to be dead. These have mainly been killed in airstrikes in Syria, this includes the French brothers Fabien and Jean-Michel Clain.
Started at the football stadium
Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, believed to have been the mastermind behind the attacks, was killed by French police outside Paris five days after the attacks.
The massacre in Paris began late in the evening of November 13, when jihadists blew themselves up outside the Stade de France national stadium, where France played an international match against Germany.
President François Hollande was in attendance. Only one person was killed in this attack, a 63-year-old Portuguese named Manuel Colaco Dias.
A group of jihadists, including Abdeslam’s brother Brahim, then started firing wildly from a car at a number of restaurants in a fashionable part of Paris. There were many people in the nightclubs, and on an unusually warm evening there were many in the outdoor cafes. 39 people were killed in these attacks.
90 were killed at the concert venue
The biggest attack took place at the Bataclan concert arena. The American group Eagles of Death Metal held a concert for a packed arena. Three jihadists, including Abdeslam, stormed in during the song “Kiss the Devil”.
90 people were killed and many more wounded in a brutally brutal massacre at Bataclan. They also took hostages, but these later recovered safely. The police ended the massacre and two of the three hostages were killed.
Hollande declared a state of emergency and closed the borders. It was the first time a state of emergency had been declared in France since the war in Algeria in the late 1950s. It was the second major terrorist attack in France in less than a year. Ten months earlier, jihadists had attacked the editorial office of the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and a Jewish grocery store in the capital, with the loss of a total of 20 lives.
Expect strong emotions
The trial is also expected to clarify the psychological wounds of the survivors, the 350 wounded, and the families of the victims. For five weeks from September 28, they will testify.
– I have to be there. I will suffer, but it will be a step in the right direction, says Cristina Garrido to the news agency AFP. Garrido’s son, Juan Alberto, was among those killed in Bataclan.
– What I want is for them to hear about the pain they left us with, she says from Madrid.
Lawyer Olivia Ronen leads the group that defends Abdelsam. She admits that the trial will be very emotional, but adds that the court must keep this at a distance if they are to be able to comply with the principles of the rule of law.
The verdict is expected to be handed down on May 24 and 25 next year.
The only similar trial in recent French history is the case of the Charlie Hebdo attack. That trial began in September 2020. While the case was under way, France was shaken by other terrorist attacks by young jihadists, including the brutal murder of teacher Samuel Paty and the knife attack on a church in Nice.
(©NTB)
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