France: The trial of the Paris attacks has started | Six years ago, a jihadist commando assassinated 130 people in Saint-Denis and in the French capital

This Wednesday, as soon as he entered the Court, the Franco-Moroccan, protected by a bulletproof glass and guarded by about twenty agents, expressed his total support for the Islamic State. When the President of the Tribunal, Jean-Louis Peries, asked him his profession the jihadist said: “I quit all profession to become an ISIS fighter.” Then, defiantly, he pronounced the shahada, the Islamist profession of faith: “First of all, I want to attest that there is no other deity but Allah and that Muhammad is his servant and messenger. Later, after a break, Abdeslam complained about the conditions of his detention. This time in a voice of protest, he said: “Everything is fine here, there are flat screens, but there… I have been treated like a dog for over six years. I did not complain for one reason only, because when I die, I will be resurrected ”. The president of the tribunal replied: “here we are in an ecclesiastical tribunal, but in a democratic tribunal”.

The longest trial in history

The process will take 9 months and there will be hundreds of witnesses, among them the former socialist president François Hollande (in power at the time of the events) as good as 1,800 victims who are part of the prosecution and over 330 lawyers representing all parties. An exceptional event, the trial will be filmed and will constitute, according to Christian Saint-Palais, the lawyer for one of the defendants, “the longest trial in history”. The files occupy a voluminous space in the courtroom where there are a total of 542 volumes.

The testimonies offered by the survivors of that night all had the same painful echo: “I will never forget, I will never be able to overcome it” (Marc). “It is impossible, these hours remain intact in my memory, I will not be able, I think, to turn the page of these hours, of the shots, of the constant threat of death” (Jean). Paul Henri was the first victim on November 13. Henri was the member of the security service at the Stade de France where the carnage began. One of the terrorists detonated the bomb vest he was wearing next to him. He was deaf in one ear and marked forever: “I did not come out unscathed, I have nightmares, it’s hard,” he said in his testimony. Of the 20 defendants present, even if he did not detonate his belt, Salam Abdeslam is the only one to have wandered with death in tow throughout that night which, after the attacks in January of the same year against the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, forever changed French society, the laws and the way to face the fight against terrorism. The remainder of the 19 accused, for the most part, were part of the logistics and support chain that enabled the command to carry out the massacre.

During several meetings with the media before the trial, François Molins, then public prosecutor of the Republic, explained that this long trial will be very useful “for the families of the victims because it will allow them to understand what happened. And also, according to the former prosecutor, “Building a collective memory through which the values ​​of humanity and dignity of the society in which we live are reaffirmed”.

The investigations carried out during these six years have made it possible to reconstruct with precision the manner in which the attacks were prepared. There is no chance, no rushed act. The coordinated terrorist act of November 13, 2015 responds to a plan drawn up and prepared for several months, in several countries, by a cell made up of around thirty people. Historic attack due to the intensity of the crime, historical investigations and judgment due to the complexity of the assembly, the central protagonist of the events, the Islamic State and the other actors in the massacre. Most are jihadists born on French or European territory tempted by revenge and bloody action as a means of perpetrating it.