At the trial of the attacks, laughter in tribute to the murdered cartoonists

A fresco tribute to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack.

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• Fourteen people, three of whom are on the run, have been tried since September 2 by the Special Assize Court on suspicion of having provided assistance to the terrorists in the January 2015 attacks.

• This Thursday, the families of the victims who died in the attack on January 7, 2015 in the premises of Charlie Hebdo paid tribute to their murdered relatives.

At the special assize court in Paris,

How to tell the loss, the lack left by the disappearance, on January 7, 2015, of a father, a husband, a son, a lover?

Failing to be able to find the words to say this gaping void left after the attack which decimated the editorial staff of

, the relatives of the murdered cartoonists tried, this Thursday, to revive them.

The laughter of Cabu, the erudition of Philippe Honoré or the irreverence of Charb burst into the courtroom during the hearings of these families who came to testify at the bar.

Tributes made with modesty, sometimes with anger, which awakened this painful feeling born on the morning of January 7, that of an immense mess.

"I will never hear his laugh again"

"'Véronique don't worry."

It was his favorite phrase ", remembers the wife of the creator of" Beauf "and the presenter of Récré A2

Jean Cabut, dit Cabu.

“He was a free man, a staunch pacifist […].

A cheerful man who loved to laugh.

Gourmet too, he loved cakes.

Fan of Charles Trenet, lover of jazz - he has never missed a concert - and lover of baroque music.

He listened to a song every night before going to sleep, ”continues Véronique Cabut.

This laugh, his wife will "never hear it again".

For five years, the music has been silent with the disappearance of her husband.

Murdered at 74, Cabu will have devoted his life to drawing.

Drawings that she is keen to defend today in court.

And particularly this one made by her husband, who in 2008 accompanied the publication of the caricatures of Mohammed published in

.

"Nothing angers me anymore and makes me sadder that this cover is reduced to this single sentence:" It's hard to be loved by idiots ".

No, the sentence is: "Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists: it's hard to be loved by idiots".

You have to read a drawing, you have to look at it, ”insists Véronique Cabut, her voice broken by emotion.

"Tonight, you will find your father"

How to think the unthinkable?

Five years after the attack, Hélène Honoré, the daughter of the designer Honoré, still does not succeed.

This morning of January 7, in the taxi that takes her to the editorial office after being warned by her mother, the thirty-something tries to reassure herself:

"I said to myself: 'Get a grip on yourself, Hélène, that can't happen. Tonight, you're going to find your father.'

This thought still crosses me today ”.

At 39 years old, the young woman salutes the memory of a "loving", "happy" man, this father so sweet who crunched on the paper tablecloths of restaurants with exotic animals that his only daughter must have guessed.

“Self-taught scholar” passionate about economics and deeply marked by the Algerian war in which he refused to participate to the point of starving himself, Honoré embarked on political drawing in the early 1990s. “Very close” to his Father, Hélène Honoré continues to wonder what he could have said to the Kouachi brothers if he had been given the opportunity.

“He would have talked to them calmly, and then he would have talked to them about drawing […].

He would have asked them questions, about their childhood, about their dreams ”.

An alternative to this "brutal" reality, to this "most extreme violence that nothing can ever justify", she explains.

"He was everything to me"

Also shot in the offices of the editorial staff, Michel Renaud will have devoted his life to travel and others, remembers his wife.

A journalist by training, invited by Cabu this morning of January 7, the founder of the Clermont-Ferrand “Rendez-vous du carnet de voyage” was a “happy” man, breathes Gala Renaud.

“He was everything to me, my love, my husband, the daddy of my child who is not yet 16 years old.

He was also the man with whom I could go to the end of the world, ”explains this teacher born in Belarus, whom she met at the end of the 1990s during one of Michel Renaud's journeys.

Devastated by the death of her spouse, Gala Renaud says she "gave all her strength and energy" to bring up her daughter: "I did not want to spoil her childhood," she slips modestly.

Despite her bitterness towards the new management of the newspaper, which she accuses of having "abandoned" it, she wishes to address all the relatives gathered in the courtroom: "We, the families, we have suffered and faced this tragedy with all our dignity we are united in something that is beyond us, in our fight for freedom.

"

" They lost "

This fight, Stéphane Charbonnier, says Charb, will have led him all his life.

Threatened and targeted by Al-Qaida since the publication of the Muhammad caricatures, the cartoonist had been living under police protection since 2011. “He has never ceased to denounce the ideas he found nauseating: that of the National Front, of the anti-Semitism, racism, ”lists Marika Bert, a close friend of the designer who became director of human resources for the satirical newspaper.

Film buff, feminist, passionate about drawing since childhood, Charb was "married" to

believes Valérie Martinez, who prefers to define herself as "the lover" or "lover" of the designer rather than as his "companion".

"Charb was very attached to celibacy, and I respected that," she says.

Our case file

Beyond the designer, it is to the teenager and to the son that Denise Charbonnier paid tribute: “Stéphane was a generous, human being, always ready to help everyone […] in our region. was the annex to the school, everyone came to lunch, ”recalls the artist's mother.

But more than the words, it was the drawings signed by Charb and shown at the hearing at his request that reminded the court of the immense loss caused by these attacks.

Religion, capitalism, the left, Jean-Marie Bigard, Benoît Hamon, ethnic registration, the elimination of the number of civil servant positions, everything goes.

Laughter erupts, even in the box of the accused.

At the conclusion of her hearing, shaken by emotion, Véronique Cabut proclaimed in a loud voice: “

is here.

is alive.

It is very important for me to say that.

I will be supporting Charlie Hebdo all my life.

I don't want the terrorists and their accomplices to win.

Besides, they lost.

"Hélène Honoré, for her part, made a wish as a preamble to her testimony:" I would like everyone to be able to imagine them here alive with us ".

In the space of these few minutes, faced with these drawings and these laughs, it's done.

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