This Wednesday, the trial of the January 2015 attacks opened before the special assize court.
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Benoit PEYRUCQ / AFP
Fourteen people are tried until November 10 by the special assize court, suspected of having provided support to the terrorists of the January 2015 attacks.
On January 7, while jogging in Fontenay-aux-Roses, Romain D. was the target of a gunman who still remains unidentified today.
Investigators linked this attack to that of the January attacks, because the weapon with which he was seriously injured was found in Amédy Coulibaly's arsenal.
At the special assize court in Paris,
How to rebuild when you do not know who wanted to kill you and especially why?
When the crime of which you are the victim does not fit into any box?
"It's difficult, I'm all alone in this story", modestly confides Romain, 38, at the helm of the special assize court which has been considering the attacks of January 2015 for two weeks. Romain is indeed the only one to having been chased by a sniper while he was jogging in Fontenay-aux-Roses, in the Hauts-de-Seine.
The only one also - especially - to ignore the circumstances of this tragedy, the four years of instruction not having made it possible to remove the gray areas around this assassination attempt.
This evening of January 7, 2015, ten hours after the Charlie Hebdo attack, Romain - slender figure, salt and pepper hair - interrupts his jogging on the Green Coulee to do some weight training in a landscaped area.
A few moments earlier, he saw a man, a black down jacket on his back, a fur hood, sitting on a bench.
“As soon as I walked past him, I felt a shot hit my arm, I fell to the ground.
With his hands hanging on the bar of the Assize Court, he remembers the smell of gunpowder and the shrapnel he sees near his face, the bullet having pierced his bicep.
But hardly has he understood that the man is already near him and pointing him, he explains, mimicking the scene.
"Time has frozen"
“We looked each other in the eye, time froze.
I felt a hesitation, but also that he wanted to finish the job.
I knew I had to save myself.
»Drawing on his last strength, he gets up and runs towards a residential area.
The man follows him without stopping to shoot.
“I heard him behind months, he was chasing me.
I felt pain in my buttocks and leg.
"
Five bullets will pierce Romain, who manages to keep his lucidity.
It rings at a pavilion.
The owner, distraught, does not dare to open the door to him.
The young man then remains hidden in the garden until the arrival of the police.
He will see in the distance the shadow of his attacker overtaking him.
During the year he is in the hospital, Romain is afraid that the terrorists will come and kill him.
Even today, he has anxiety attacks, is hypervigilant # AttentatsJanvier2015
- Caroline Politi (@c_politi) September 17, 2020
Why target him, a temporary worker with a "smooth life"?
These are the words of Michel Faury, former head of the Hauts-de-Seine judicial police, heard a little earlier in the morning.
The link between this assassination attempt and the attacks committed by Amédy Coulibaly was only made four days later, thanks to the ballistic analysis: the cases found at the scene correspond to a weapon discovered in the terrorist's arsenal. .
Even today, investigators can only speculate on the reasons for this assassination attempt.
One of the most plausible: the desire to test these remilitarized weapons.
"If we have to test a weapon to see if it works, it's a choice of a discreet place," said Michel Faury.
"I'm 100% sure it's not me"
There is also a question about the identity of the author of the shootings.
Before being plunged into a coma, Romain gave a description of his attacker.
A man of 1.70m, European type, perhaps from the Maghreb.
But not black, it is a certainty which he does not give up, even today.
Theoretically, this element should exclude Amédy Coulibaly from the list of suspects, but in the eyes of investigators the doubt persists.
The terrorist lived for a long time a few hundred meters from the scene of the crime and a down jacket resembling the one described by the victim was discovered in his home.
There is also this intriguing testimony from the manager of a pizzeria.
The latter formally recognized Amédy Coulibaly on the evening of the crime and remembers that he was wearing a tactical vest and an imposing sports bag distorted by what it contained ...
Despite these elements, the victim remains “80%” convinced that the author of the shootings is in the box of the accused.
“Not 100%, because I saw it for three seconds and in the dark.
On several occasions during the investigation, he identified Amar Ramdani as the shooter.
If he is suspected of having provided logistical support to Amédy Coulibaly, the man has never been indicted for this assassination attempt.
The analysis of his telephony showed that he was in Garges-lès-Gonesse, in Val-d'Oise, at the time of the crime.
"I am 100% sure that it is not me, that I have never shot him", defends the latter.
Double penalty
"How do you deal with the fact that the accused has never been identified?"
“, Asks the lawyer of the accused, Me Daphné Pugliesi.
"We see it badly, what do you want me to tell you.
It is a double penalty, in short, for Romain, who is the victim of a barbaric act and powerless to identify its author.
Discreetly, the thirty-something evokes his long hospital career: operations every two days for a month and a half to close his calf, these two meters of intestine that had to be removed and the impossibility today of walking or run a long time.
He also tells of the anguish of seeing terrorists appear while he is in his hospital room and the hypervigilence.
“Even this trial I live very badly, I have a headache every day.
"
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