This Friday takes place the 36th day of the trial of the attacks of November 13. It is the end of a long sequence of five weeks devoted to the hearings of the civil parties. Journalist Noémie Schulz, who follows the trial for CNEWS, looks back on this highlight.
Every week, from Monday to Friday, ten to fifteen people a day came to the bar to tell what they experienced on the evening of November 13, 2015. In total, more than 300 testimonies were heard at the fully filmed hearings, unprecedented in French judicial history.
If we thought we already knew these testimonies to have read or heard them, “this accumulation of narrative was necessary to understand what terrorism is”, underlines Noémie Schulz.
Soul wounds
Three weeks were devoted to the attack on the Bataclan. The chronology of events was thus written day after day in the courtroom. The chilling, “unbearable” testimonies have multiplied. Some victims wondering what it feels like to be shot dead, “hoping it would go fast”, others reporting the pleasure terrorists seemed to take in killing. Beyond the images, all the victims keep in memory the memory of the groans of the dying victims.
The trial was also an opportunity to talk about the state of mental health of the survivors. “Everyone who testified is doing badly. Post-traumatic stress is severe, even for those who have left the scene of the attacks without a scratch. The wounds of the soul are just as devastating, ”recalled Noémie Schulz, recalling the memory of Guillaume, a survivor of the Bataclan who ended his life two years after the attack.