the Bardo trial opens in the absence of French victims

It has already been postponed many times for logistical issues. The trial of the bombing of the Bardo should open this Tuesday before a criminal court of Tunisian justice. On the dock, 26 alleged accomplices of the attack that had killed 22 people on March 18, 2015 in Tunis. Thirty people are also prosecuted in absentia. The two terrorists who managed to break into the museum were killed that day. The hearing must only last three days. The defendants, whose identities have not been disclosed, are tried under an anti-terrorist law pbaded in the summer of 2015 for "terrorist crimes". They are punishable by death. However, this sentence has been the subject of a moratorium since 1991 in Tunisia.

The attack was claimed by the Islamic State. On March 18, 2015, two terrorists, Jaber Khachnaoui and Ybadine Laabidi, opened fire nearby and then inside this tourist hotspot in the Tunisian capital. The attack continues for three hours before the intervention of the police. Appraisal: 21 tourists killed, including four French, as well as a Tunisian policeman. Six other Frenchmen had been wounded. In the process, the Tunisian authorities arrested about twenty people, claiming to have dismantled "80% of the cell" involved. A few months later, eight of them, including the man once presented as the main culprit, are released. During the investigation, the lawyers of the French civil parties repeatedly denounced "gray areas".

A lot of confusion and doubts

The trial was opened on the sly in the summer of 2017, without any prior announcement. The first two hearings were dominated by a great deal of confusion. According to The Parisian , two civil party lawyers have expressed their perplexity in a letter sent in October to Premier Édouard Philippe. In particular, my Géraldine Berger-Strenger and Gérard Chemla express their "doubts as to the capacity of the Tunisian judiciary to manage this trial in conditions of transparency and fairness acceptable". They claim to have had only limited access to the file, for lack of translation. Me Philippe de Veulle, who defends five French victims, has meanwhile decided to boycott the hearing.

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Holding this express trial is not likely to lessen the frustration of their clients. The hearing will take place without them. The French State refused to take charge of their displacement. Only a giant screen retransmission is planned from a room of the Court of Appeal of Paris. No public intervention will be possible. "We are satisfied that this trial is taking place but angry to see that France has let people down in the face of this dramatic situation," says Alexandre Martin, questioned by The Dispatch . The Toulouse lawyer nevertheless planned to make the trip to represent "the memory of those who were murdered and especially for the bench of the civil parties is not empty."