From two to eighteen years in prison. The Special Assize Court of Paris went beyond the requisitions of the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office for the eight accused in the trial of the Nice attack which left 86 dead and more than 450 injured on the Promenade des Anglais on July 14, 2016 The driver of the ram-truck who drove into the crowd, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was killed by the police after his murderous run on the Promenade des Anglais.
When the first sentences were pronounced on Tuesday evening, applause resounded, in Paris as in Nice, in the great hall of the Acropolis where the verdict was broadcast live like the whole trial since September 5. If they stopped ten seconds after starting, when the president of the court Laurent Raviot reframed the room, they continued with each enumeration of the convictions in Nice, where the atmosphere was between relief and bursts into tears.
“The first time I see so many people”
For this special day which closed three months of trial, 125 civil parties, out of the 2,500 constituted at the trial, were present in the room of Nice. A large part of the victims living in the Alpes-Maritimes had decided to move to Paris to physically experience this moment.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen so many people,” says Mickaël Mourjan, a confectionery seller on the Promenade des Anglais at the time of the attack on the ram truck, which came “often” after being heard in Paris. . Usually, about fifteen people attended the retransmission of the trial. But tonight, “it was particularly important to be there,” he says as he leaves the room. According to him, “justice took the right decisions” and “the culprits took what they had to live up to. He feels a “relief after 64 days of hearing” which he thinks “necessary” to take the time “to listen to everyone and apply the law”.
Alain Dariste, who lost his granddaughter Léana on July 14, 2016, breathes, eyes filled with tears and trembling voice, that the victims have “escaped small sentences”. The co-president of the Promenade des Anges association adds: “This trial was exhausting, I have the impression of coming out of a boxing ring but I am satisfied because it was more than what was asked. »
The end of a chapter
This feeling, Yacine Bourouais shares it. Words fail him to describe his feelings after “so much tension for more than six years”. “I feel really bad,” he blurts out just before leaving the Acropolis. He simply hopes that there will be no appeal, the defendants and the prosecution have ten days to lodge an appeal, because it “will not be [t] unable to overcome these conditions again”.
He had specially moved from abroad, where he has lived since leaving Nice in 2019, to be there to “be with [ses] friends and show solidarity between victims”. For him, this verdict marks “the end of a chapter” like “the commemorations each year”, but it will continue to “bring the memory of the victims to life” of the attack through “associations, art and writings “. What he “implores” now is the Nice prosecutor’s office. This 38-year-old man develops: “I would like him to advance the investigation into the security devices that were there that evening. I expect a lot from this judicial investigation opened since 2017. I would like that, here too, the right decisions are taken to allow the reconstruction of all. »
“I will continue to suffer all my life”
23-year-old Kimberly Torres also has a lot of hope in this second justice response. For her, “we wouldn’t be here if there had been a real security system” on July 14, 2016, she quotes, “something comparable to what was put in place for a football match” . Angry, she remembers “the truck in front [ses] eyes” and this person “who [l’] a thrust” which is “perhaps no longer there”.
That evening, she had, among other things, crushed lungs, cracked sides and a displaced pelvis. The young woman does not have any of her relatives who died that evening, but she almost ” [se] to lose [elle]-even,” she breathes quaveringly. Coming to listen to the verdict in Nice on Tuesday was then a “real ordeal” for her, who has just started a psychological follow-up and does not feel like going back to work. In tears, supported by those close to her, she lets go with a lot of emotion: “It’s a lot but it’s not enough for me. They deserve to die. They will spend eighteen years in prison but I will continue to suffer all my life. »