PARIS (AP) – For music lovers, they spent nearly three hours at gunpoint, wondering if it would become another body on the floor of Paris ’Bataclan concert hall.
For the grieving mother, the night of the massacre she stole her son and tarnished his vision of the vibrant neighborhood they both loved.
For the French president, a celebration of the national football team was transformed into sleepless days to face a shocking extremist attack.
Survivors of the Islamic State group attack in Paris, on the night of November 13, 2015, and those mourning the 130 dead, prepare for the expected trial and await justice.
It begins Wednesday in a modern and safe complex integrated into the original 13th-century courthouse in Paris. The main chamber and the 12 overflow chambers can accommodate 1,800 victims, 330 lawyers and 141 journalists accredited for the nine-month trial.
Twenty men they are on trial, six of them in absentia. All but one of the absent men are presumed dead in Syria or Iraq. Most are accused of helping create false identities, transporting attackers back to Europe from Syria, providing them with money and telephones, and supplying explosives and weapons.
The attacks put France in a state of emergency. For Stéphane Toutlouyan and the other abductees within the Bataclan, the transformation was intensely personal.
“The reaction to that, then, was to try to regain control of our lives and do things we might not have done before, because we didn’t have time to waste,” he told The Associated Press.
On the fateful November 13, a cell of nine ISIS supporters armed with automatic rifles and explosive vests attacked the French capital. Almost all were from France or Belgium, as well as the tenth member and survivor of the cell, Salah Abdeslam.
Abdeslam, who abandoned his car and malfunctioned with an explosive vest, is the only defendant who has been charged with murder at trial. Another key defendant, Mohammed Abrini, reappeared months later in images of the ISIS attack on Brussels airport and metro.
Many of the dead attackers, along with Abdesalam and Abrini, were childhood friends in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. Some joined the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, including the leader of the Paris attack, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Driving three rental cars, they took their “death convoy” on the road linking Brussels and Paris on November 12, 2015 and scattered in reserved hotel rooms.
The next day, German and French football teams clashed at the Stade de France, the country’s national stadium on the outskirts of Paris.
It was a cozy Friday evening and the bars and restaurants of the city were packed to the brim. Victor Muñoz, a 25-year-old from the eleventh district of Paris, was with old friends. At the nearby Bataclan concert hall, the American band Eagles of Death Metal played in full swing, including Toutlouyan, an enthusiastic fan of live rock.
The sound of the first suicide attack at 9:16 p.m. barely transmitted the noise of the stadium crowd. The second came four minutes later. French President François Hollande, at the football match with the German Foreign Minister, was informed of the bombers killed abroad.
“I stayed in my seat for a few minutes to avoid a panic. People see me from their seats and can’t establish the link between the detonations and my march, or there is a risk of stamping, ”Hollande told Le Parisien this month.
By then, a squadron of gunmen, including Abdeslam and Abaaoud’s brother, had opened fire on La Bonne Bière and other bars and restaurants in the neighborhood. Muñoz was among the dead.
This bloodshed outside ended at 21:41 in the Voltaire cafe when Brahim Abdeslam detonated his explosives. The other two attackers fled.
Worse was to follow. At 9:47 p.m., three more gunmen stormed the Bataclan, firing indiscriminately. Ninety people died within minutes. The gunmen distinguished a dozen people, including Toutlouyan. To this day he does not know why they were saved.
“We were behind a window for 2 and a half hours, watching what was happening, wandering if they would shoot us in five minutes, in two hours or in two days. At that moment, and for 2 and a half hours, we were not the owners of our own lives, ”he said.
His instructions: Report the location of the police and then act as intervenors during sporadic negotiations. Shortly after midnight, Hollande gave the order to enter. Two of the gunmen exploded; the third was shot by police.
Now there are questions that only men in the rostrum can answer.
Abdeslam’s decision to abandon the Renault Clio north of Paris and ask for help in Brussels is an enigma. Two friends drove all night to look for him and, on the way back to Belgium, he went through three police checks.
Abdeslam was eventually arrested in his Molenbeek district of Brussels in March, days before the ISIS network attacked Brussels airport and metro, killing 32 more people.
Abrini’s role is also murky. He spent one night with ISIS attackers, but left Paris on November 12 to hire a driver to take him to Brussels for three hours because he had missed the last train. He reappeared in Brussels months later, accompanying two suicides at the airport, but walked away when the bloodshed began.
Two of the defendants are accused of plotting a simultaneous attack on Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in 2015 and went to the airport on November 13, but returned to Brussels for unknown reasons. That day, Abdeslam’s car was idling for a while at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport.
The day after the murderous nightmare, a Frenchman in Syria claimed responsibility for the attacks on behalf of ISIS.
Abaaoud and another attacker died days later in a police raid.
Abdeslam refused to speak to researchers or their lawyers in Belgium. But he did ask for a young lawyer in France known for his eloquence, Olivia Ronen. She will be your main lawyer.
For many victims, talking is the point. He spends a month on his testimonies.
“It’s really important participation for them,” said Jeanne Sulzer, a lawyer representing ten victims. “What they are looking for is to establish truth, justice.”
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Alex Turnbull contributed to this report.