PARIS (AP) – France, in a custom-built safe complex embedded in a 13th-century courthouse, France on Wednesday opened the trial of 20 men accused of Islamic State attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured.
Nine suicide bombers and terrorists attacked within a few minutes of each other the French national football stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and the restaurants and cafes of Paris on November 13, 2015. Survivors of the attacks and those who mourn their dead filled the rooms. they were designed to accommodate 1,800 plaintiffs and more than 300 lawyers.
The only survivor of that night’s extremist cell, Salah Abdeslam, is the key defendant. Abdeslam, whose brother was among the suicides that night, appeared in a black short-sleeved shirt and black pants, with his long hair tied behind his back.
He was first asked to identify himself and, after chanting a prayer, asked to declare his profession and declared that he was “a fighter for the Islamic State.”
Abdeslam is the sole accused of murder. The same IS network attacked Brussels months later and killed 32 more people.
The presiding judge, Jean-Louis Peries, acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances of the events of that night and the trial of nine months to come.
“The events we are about to decide are inscribed in their historical intensity as among the international and national events of this century,” he said.
Dominique Kielemoes, whose son died of bleeding in one of the cafes, said the month was devoted to witnessing the victims in judgment he will be crucial both to his own healing and to that of the nation.
“The killers, these terrorists, thought they were shooting at the crowd, at a mass of people. But it was not a mass: these were individuals who had a life, who loved, had hopes and expectations, and about whom we must speak at trial. It’s important, “she said.
Twenty men are charged, but six of them will be tried in absentia. Abdeslam, who abandoned his rental car north of Paris and ruled out a suicide vest that was not working properly before fleeing his home in Brussels, has refused to speak to investigators. But he keeps the answers to many of the remaining questions about the attack and the people who planned it, both in Europe and abroad.
The modern audience was built inside the famous 13th-century Palace of Justice in Paris, where Maria Antonieta and Emile Zola, among others, were prosecuted.
For the first time, victims can also have a secure audio link to listen to from home if they want to with a 30-minute delay.
The trial is expected to last nine months. The month of September will be devoted to the presentation of police and forensic evidence. October will be delivered to the testimony of the victims. From November to December, officials such as former French President François Hollande will testify, as well as relatives of the aggressors.
Abdeslam will be questioned several times. So far he has refused to talk to investigators.
The attacks transformed France, which declared a state of emergency that night and now has armed agents constantly patrolling public spaces. And it changed forever the lives of all those who suffered losses or witnessed the violence that night.
“Our ability to be carefree is gone,” Kielemoes said. “The desire to go out, to travel, all this has disappeared. Even if we still do several things, our hunger for life is gone. “
For Jean-Luc Wertenschlag, who lives above the cafe where his son died and who rushed downstairs shortly after the first shots to try to save lives, has even changed his way of moving around the city where was born and raised. He never leaves home without the first aid equipment he was missing that night, when his shirt was ripped off to stop a victim’s bleeding.
“What we did that evening with other people, to help people injured during the attack, was a way to resist what these monsters had tried to do to us,” he said.
Among those who were to testify was then-President Francois Hollande, who was at the stadium in France at the time he was attacked and who gave the final order to the police special forces to storm the Bataclan.
Hollande said Wednesday he would speak “not for the sake of French politics, but for the victims of the attacks.” He said he felt intensely the weight of responsibility that night and during the days and weeks following the aftermath of the attack.
“When the cameras go off, you go back to the solitude of the Elysee (presidential palace),” Hollande told France-Info. “Questions what can I do? … What just happened will change society? “
None of the procedures will be broadcast on television or broadcast to the public, but will be recorded for archival purposes. Video recording has only been allowed for a handful of cases in France considered of historical value, including last year’s trial for the 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris and a kosher supermarket.
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Angela Charlton contributed to this report.