At the specially composed Assize Court in Paris,
Alice is the first, this Thursday, to come to the bar of the specially composed Assize Court. Long brown hair frames her slender face and highlights huge green eyes. She was 23 years old on November 13, 2015 and that evening, “it was good, it was joy”. She had just found her brother, Aristide, a professional rugby player in Italy and with three friends, they were getting ready to eat at Petit Cambodge, one of the terraces targeted by the terrorists. He will testify a few minutes later. He looks like her like two drops of water. Same features, same eyes. Same speech too, imbued with humanity. One after another recounted their struggle “to keep love and joy”, to remain positive “without falling into anger and hatred”.
“We are fighting at every moment so that this episode does not nibble our whole life, insists the young woman in a gentle way. Obviously, we are not the same. Obviously we have scars but we know we are lucky to live. That evening, Aristide, seeing an armed man getting out of a car, found his rugby player reflexes: he threw himself on his sister, pinning her to the ground and protecting her with his body. He will take a bullet in the back, one in the leg and a third in the ankle. Alice was seriously injured in the arm. “My brother Aristide put his body to protect me”, insists the young woman. He reminds the bar that if she had not struggled to keep him awake, he would surely not be there to testify.
“My life had become a mountain of pain”
At court, neither of them hides the difficulties of their reconstruction. She, the professional circus artist, acrobat, has never been able to regain the use of her hand despite two years of rehabilitation. To continue her career, she had to change her technique. His brother, an opening half promised to an international destiny, clung to his dream for a year and a half. Despite five ribs “exploded”, wounds to the heart, lungs, several hundred shrapnel in the left leg. “I didn’t want to accept what was going on. But rehabilitation then training exhausted him. “My life had become a mountain of mental and physical pain”, confides the young man modestly, saying that he sometimes lost his footing to the point of going to the emergency room of the Sainte-Anne psychiatric hospital. In March 2017, he finally gave up his career to become a videographer.
While he expects “a lot” from this trial, he says he does not feel any need for “individual justice”. And to clarify: “I took this event as a step to be taken, a step to be taken. All the stories are singular, intimate but this Thursday at the helm of many survivors of the terraces tell with modest words this same fight to stay on the side of the light, this relentless fight but carried out without hatred for life. There is, for example, Aminata. Tears roll down her cheeks as she remembers how, that evening of November 13, her older sister was murdered in front of her and her son’s eyes. Yet behind her mask, we can guess a smile when she evokes family solidarity, the clan that surrounded her from the first minutes. “It’s difficult for everyone but we try to move forward, to stay strong. Life goes on ”, sums up the young mother.
“We are not numbers, you are not robots”
Claude, 57, has been at the helm for almost half an hour, telling how he “clung to life” after being seriously injured in the leg and arm at La Bonne Bière. . Before going to sit down again, the man with the graying hair turns towards the box of the accused. He wants to send them a message. “Without hate”. “Despite everything I have endured, I consider you first and foremost as human beings,” he begins. He wishes to respond to Salah Abdeslam who, a few minutes earlier, once again “justified” his actions by coalition fire in Syria and Iraq. Ten days ago, Salah Abdeslam said he had “nothing personal” against the victims. Inaudible explanations for this former labor inspector. “You say you take revenge for what happened in Syria, how could you have thought that the death of hundreds of people here could make up for the deaths of hundreds of people there? “
In front of a room seized by this moment of humanity, Claude continues. “If you are ready to talk and regret, I am ready to forgive. But forgiveness must be asked. It is a fairly demanding process, which requires you and me to go a long way, ”insists the fifty-year-old, even claiming to be ready to go to prison to discuss with the accused. Perhaps Yassine Atar will seize this outstretched hand. Shortly after Salah Abdeslam, he too wanted to speak, but this time to express his “greatest compassion”. “There are people in this box saddened and touched by what they heard,” insists the accused.