LIVE – “I am 23 years old, I am a hostage”, the survivors of the Bataclan testify

All the survivors come back to the fact that the hostage-taking was not known to the general public.

Like Grégory, Caroline evokes the fact that after being heard by the police all night, she went to the hospital. “I asked for a work stoppage because I realized that I could not return to work on Monday,” she explains, almost apologizing. She says she was taken hostage at the Bataclan.

The response was violent: “I was told ‘there was no hostage taking, I find you irritable, don’t you want to go see the psychological cell?'”

Caroline was accompanying Grégory that evening to the Bataclan. She was also held hostage by Ismaël Omar Mostefaï and Foued Mohamed-Aggad.

In a soft voice, tinged with emotion, Caroline evokes these two hours of horror. She describes in great detail this hostage-taking by these terrorists “who spoke in Arabic, but they did not fear the language, it was not fluid.”

“They did not seem to have prepared this part, to have to negotiate anything, in my head, we had left for the night”, explains this 40-year-old woman in a wheelchair because neuromuscular disease.

In this corridor, each hostage had his function. Gregory had to watch the door leading to the balcony.

“I was in charge of looking at the ceiling, to avoid … I don’t know what,” she said.

Caroline then evokes the assault. Lying on the ground, she found herself trapped under the BRI shield.

“I started to be trampled by the police, each one (of the hostages, Editor’s note) was casually trying to shoot me but the police were preventing them. David fell down he absolutely wanted to get me out, he moved the shield and m The assault was incredibly violent.

Grégory is the second hostages of the Bataclan terrorists to testify. He too was on the balcony when the attack started. With her friend Caroline, they stayed on the balcony having failed to escape. During all this hostage-taking, he will serve as an intermediary for the terrorists.

Once gathered in the hallway with the 10 other hostages, Grégory, in his forties, graying hair, tells how he “spent all his evening shouting” at the police. He was sitting in front of the door that separated the hallway from the balcony. He will be responsible for communicating with the police who are behind this door. Grégory will repeat what the terrorists tell him.

“We have 20 hostages, we have kalachs, explosive belts. We’re going to blow everything up. I don’t know if I should say ‘I’, ‘they’, ‘we’.”

The terrorists also came to chat next to him, asking him to cover his ears.

“I plugged my ears like never before. I didn’t want to hear what sauce were going to be eaten,” he recalls in a soft and hesitant voice.

He will also have to relate to one of the terrorists, diminished by dint of having fired, what he hears. When he evokes the groans of the wounded, the terrorist retorts with the situation of women and children in Syria.

Grégory believes that for the terrorists, “after Bataclan, it’s not very clear to them, we have the impression that they are going to procrastinate.” They used the hostages’ phones to talk to the negotiator. Grégory resists.

“Everyone gives their phone. I don’t want to give mine, I don’t want to give my things. So I turn it off. I didn’t want to give them a good, something that was mine. I don’t know why I did this. “

For David Fritz Goeppinger, the terrorists “improvised”. When Samy Amimour blew himself up on the Bataclan stage, the two terrorists “enjoyed the death of their colleague” and at the same time something was wrong.

The second part of the hostage-taking described by the young man takes place in the hallway. First the hostages sit on the steps in front of a door. At this point, David takes the hand of the man next to him.

“I took his hand ‘it’s going to be fine’, I said it a bit for myself too. Today, he’s one of my greatest allies, his name is Stéphane.”

The ex-hostage also describes the tensions between the two terrorists including a discussion to know whether or not to make a call to “Souleymane”. Six phone calls were made with the negotiator. Among other things, they demanded a letter signed by François Hollande.

“They were surprised at the assault. They were on the phone when the assault started,” David recalls.

Based on slides shown on the big screen in the courtroom, David Fritz Goeppinger looks back on his hostage journey. From the hallway where he is spotted by one of the terrorists, he evokes this moment when he will be seated alongside 10 other people on the balcony.

At this point, the terrorists shout their “rather long diatribes on the Islamic State”. At one point, “a voice tells me ‘what do you think of your president?'”.

“I tell him that I don’t think anything, he answers me ‘don’t tense up because you don’t want me to kill you’. But I’m Chilean, I’m a foreigner, I’m 23 years old so politics takes over me “, explains David Fritz Goeppinger.

The terrorists justify their action by the intervention of France in Syria. “I’m 23 years old, I’m hostage for something I don’t understand anything about. My daily life was just drinking shots with my friends.”

David Fritz Goeppinger published a letter this Tuesday morning. “It must not be easy to come today”, whispered the president of the Assize Court after his testimony.

For 20 minutes, David Fritz Goeppinger testifies. In 2015, he was 23 years old, he had joined friends at the Bataclan. They were on the balcony when the attack started. During the concert, he goes to the bathroom.

“When I have finished I hear gunshots, I understand immediately that they are Kalashnikov shots”, explains David.

After a crowd movement, David finds himself all alone. He heads for a hallway. A pregnant woman asks her: “can I jump out of the window?”. “I understand everyone’s distress,” explains the young man.

He then tries to climb onto the roof. Hanging from a metal bar along the facade, a man comes next to him.

“I tell myself that I’m going to die there either from a bullet or from the fall, but I tell the guy next to me that afterwards we’ll go and have a beer.”

Then Ismaël Mostefaï, one of the terrorists, sticks his head out the window. “He says ‘get off there and if you’re not alone I’ll kill you’,” describes the young man who is under threat from the terrorist.

“I do not understand anything except that I am going to die”, breathes David Fritz Goeppinger.

Daniel Psenny then left his apartment to go down into the Amelot passage where many bodies are on the ground. He walks towards a man the only one for whom he does not have to cross the passage.

He was “badly hit by several bullets in the legs, I shot him in the hall of my building”. At that moment, Daniel Psenny felt a violent pain in the left arm, he had just been hit by a bullet fired from the first floor by one of the terrorists.

“If I fall, I die, if I remain standing, I remain alive, I remained standing”, testifies the journalist who says to have been “spared by miracle” of this November 13th.

The court viewed the footage filmed by journalist Daniel Psenny. Particularly harsh images that froze the room, survivors of the Bataclan left the room.

In these images, we can see the doors of the Bataclan emergency exits. Dozens of spectators came out. Some collapse right in front of the doors, others step over them. As the journalist at the helm describes it, “clusters of men and women” emerge.

On the facade of the building, a pregnant woman in particular was holding back at arm’s length trying to escape the terrorists. We hear him begging for help. Just like this man who yells “Oscar, Oscar” in search of his son.

We can also see people dragging the wounded on the ground in an attempt to keep them away from the Bataclan. At night, when calm returned, only cell phones were flickering.

“Even 6 years later, it’s very hard to see that again, I’m shocked by these images that I myself filmed,” concluded Daniel Psenny.

A former journalist from Le Monde came to testify. The windows of his apartment overlook the emergency exits of the Bataclan. That evening of November 13, 2015, he was working at home when he heard “like dry clicks that sounded like firecrackers”.

From his window, he filmed “a decisive moment”, a “moment which seized me by its barbarism”. The 64-year-old man was recognized as a victim.

“I have been a witness, actor, victim and miracle worker,” he says.

A video, a 6-minute extract, filmed from the 2nd floor of a building in front of the Bataclan will be broadcast during the testimony of a local resident.

Images “very strong” recalls the president of the Assize Court, who invites the civil parties who wish to leave the room when it is broadcast.

Nine hearings are scheduled today. Three people taken hostage by the terrorists will testify.

Then, the court will hear the testimony of residents of the Bataclan concert hall drawn from first responders, including peacekeepers.

This 28th day of the trial of the November 13 attacks will see the “hostages” of the Bataclan testify. For more than two hours, they were held by terrorists before being released during the assault by BRI police.