The trial of the century seen through the eyes of Emmanuel Carrère

For five weeks, the testimonies of the victims and of the first responders will follow one another, amidst horror and desperation. “We walk among tangled bodies,” says a policeman. “We slip in pools of blood, we step on bits of tooth and bone, and there are cellphones vibrating, families calling.” He goes on like this, between torn bodies, exploded skulls and “facial crashes”. Those of the survivors, many of whom were mutilated, are destroyed lives, to be rebuilt. A video claiming the Islamic State is broadcast showing the “ten lions of the caliphate”, i.e. the future suicide bombers of Paris, in a training camp in Syria intent on beheading some prisoners amidst smiles. A witness recalls having crossed the Seat of the terrorists at a traffic light. One of them allegedly rolled down the window and shouted: “The Islamic State has come to slaughter you!”.

Confesses one of the survivors, a former rugby player, whose career ended that day: “I tried to understand why young people decide to shoot other young people like this. I don’t understand, maybe there’s nothing to understand”. And yet, notes Carrère, this process would have “the immeasurable ambition of showing, over the course of nine months, from every angle, from the point of view of all the actors, what happened that night”. Numerous examples of “mutual aid, solidarity, courage” during those terrible hours. “I pushed my wife to the ground, I threw myself on top of her, everyone lay down in her parterre”. In contrast, the relentless ferocity of the executioners: “After the first bursts I saw an athletic man shooting towards the floor” says a survivor. “He came forward calmly, a couple of steps, a shot, a couple of steps, a shot. He didn’t have a balaclava. When I realized that he was bare-faced, I realized that we were all going to die ”. In the general stampede, among people who push and trample on each other, there are those who manage to hide, to save themselves by climbing into the gallery, while the parterre is now covered with tangled bodies (this is always the word that returns), ” impossible to distinguish the dead from the living.

Relatives of the victims

When it’s their turn to speak, it turns out that there is no understanding among the relatives of the victims: those who are open to forgiveness and ask “simply for justice”, those full of hatred want revenge. And the defendants? Until then they listened impassively, occasionally laughing and talking to each other. Then they take turns speaking, some of them portraying themselves as “good guys”, themselves victims of destiny, of the West, of its bombs. In reality, many of them have a criminal record, they deal in drugs and abuse alcohol. Seven of them come from Molenbeek, a suburb of Brussels where Islam has become more radicalized than elsewhere: at one point they let themselves be fascinated by Isis and its dream of conquering the world. Yes, because “the Islamic State welcomes anyone, awkward teenagers, idealists, clowns, wild lunatics, everyone is welcome, everyone is promised Eldorado: accommodation, women, weapons, hostages to torture for those who like it, and many they like”. Their defensive line consists in maintaining that “the attacks were a legitimate response to state terrorism implemented by France in Iraq and then in Syria”. In short, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. At one point Salah Abdeslam stands up and declares: “Everything you say about us jihadists is as if you were reading the last page of a book. You should read the book from the beginning.” Maybe, but what about the unwritten pages? That they were planning (evidence has been found) even more bloody attacks, if possible? We must not consider them victims, explains an “Arabist” who knows them well. Instead, they consider themselves heroes, the vanguard of a great and invincible movement that will conquer the planet. When it was his turn, Salah Abdeslam defended himself by declaring that he had not killed or injured anyone and that he had thrown the explosive belt in a dumpster, after having defused it, because he did not feel like hitting young people like him. What if it was? He knew perfectly well what was happening at the Bataclan, and he was fine with it. During the trial, Abdeslam even cried, apologized, in sibylline phrases. For him, in the end, it will be life imprisonment, without penalty reduction. The Court will deem it sufficiently demonstrated that the belt did not work because it was defective. Life imprisonment also for Mohammed Abrini, who should have been part of the commando but, according to him, would have pulled out at the last minute. For the others, he sentences from thirty years in prison down. Some released immediately (sentence already served). Only one acquitted. On balance, the testimonies of the victims were the heart and pillar of the trial, as could be expected. When they spoke, the defendants did not add much to what was already known. Hatred, fanaticism, camaraderie, gullibility, in some cases sadism.

V13, Emmanuel Carrère, Adelphi, pp. 267, 20 euros