Status: 06/29/2022 10:22 a.m
130 people died in the terrorist attacks in Paris in autumn 2015. The verdicts against 20 of the accused are now due. Christophe Naudin is one of the survivors and joint plaintiffs. How did he experience the process – and what does he expect today?
“I hope it goes well and is over quickly,” says Christophe Naudin. He nervously rubs his hands on his black jeans: “I’m really afraid it’s going to be long and stressful. I don’t want that.” He wonders what he will do afterwards. “I’ll definitely have a drink with other survivors. But then? I don’t know,” says Naudin. He spent most of the more than 140 days of the trial in court and testified himself.
Naudin is afraid of the emptiness – an emptiness that he knows from the time after the attacks. On November 13, 2015, he was in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris when the terrorists carried out their massacre, killing 90 people there, including his friend Vincent. More people died in simultaneous attacks on cafés and restaurants in the neighborhood.
Process helpful in difficult moments
Naudin survived. And even if he seems calm and almost detached, he says he lives with the trauma. The process was a kind of routine for him that was important and that he will miss after the verdict.
I was there a lot, always sat in roughly the same place. I spoke and discussed a lot with other survivors – also with lawyers and journalists. That helped, especially in the difficult moments.
testimony in court
Especially at the beginning, the teacher was in the process almost every day. At school he was able to take time off for this. He testified himself, told about the night that shook his life to its foundations.
Like more than 300 other survivors and bereaved, Naudin stood in the courtroom, the judges in front of him, the 14 defendants present to his left, including Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the terrorist squad of November 13, 2015. “I think I have him looked at it briefly when I said it was going to end up in the dustbin of history.” However, he was not at the trial to speak about Abdeslam.
I wanted to talk about what the attacks did to me and my family. To look at the accused would have given them a meaning they didn’t deserve.
“Played games – and in the end he said nothing”
He didn’t expect anything from the accused, especially not from Abdeslam. The fact that the main defendant spoke up and ended up apologizing to the victims and survivors – for Christophe it’s almost a mockery.
“I don’t believe anything he said.” At the beginning of the trial, Abdeslam said he was a fighter for the “Islamic State”. During the course of the trial, he really broke down because of the testimonies and said, “He didn’t detonate his explosive belt out of humanity. No, if anything, it was because he was scared. He played games and in the end he didn’t say anything .”
Prosecutors are asking for life imprisonment
Abdeslam said nothing about the essential questions and provided no new information about the people behind the attacks, about the organization or financing. For this reason, too, the public prosecutor speaks of the particular gravity of the guilt and demands life imprisonment with unlimited preventive detention for Abdeslam.
A punishment that is extremely harsh for Bataclan survivor Naudin – despite everything he has experienced. “I’m against the death penalty and indefinite preventive detention means he’ll never get out of prison alive. It’s so hopeless and maybe just not effective. Even if I don’t have any sympathy for him.”
The verdict against Abdeslam and the 19 co-defendants has little meaning for Christophe Naudin. It is the job of the judiciary to bring it down, the rule of law does its job. And even if the trial gave victims like him a lot of space, says Naudin, it remains his task to condemn the accused for their crimes and not to treat the victims.
The process ends – remains a trauma? A Bataclan survivor tells
Sabine Wachs, ARD Paris, June 28, 2022 10:17 p.m