Trial of the January 2015 attacks: the distress of the victims of the Hyper Cacher
Flowers in front of the Hyper Cacher, January 23, 2015, a few days after the attack.
AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN
Text by: Laura Martel
5 mins
This week, the court will take a detailed look at the investigation and the links established between the perpetrators of the January 2015 attacks and the accused.
A new phase in the trial, until then mainly devoted to the testimonies of the civil parties.
Last week, the survivors and relatives of the victims of the Hyper Cacher hostage-taking were on the stand.
Overwhelming testimonies in which a phrase often came up, like a terrible leitmotif: "Killed because they were Jews".
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From our special correspondent at the Paris courthouse,
In addition to the pain, misunderstanding and anger, survivors and loved ones of Hyper Cacher victims face a violent, absurd reality: they lived through hell or their loved ones died, because they were Jews. .
The anti-Semitic nature of this attack, Amedy Coulibaly is the first to claim it, during the hostage-taking, to all his interlocutors: police, media and first and foremost, to the hostages.
He has this appalling sentence reported by the young cashier Zarie: "
You are the two things I hate most in the world: Jews and French
".
Zarie is one of the few survivors to take the stand.
The majority could not, did not want, were afraid.
Zarie, she came, but from Israel where she moved, like other victims elsewhere.
But she had to be there, she said, to tell what happened to the four victims.
"
They were murdered, so savagely, only because they were Jews, and it is inexcusable, out of the question that we forget
", insists the young woman.
“Why this hatred? "
The relatives of these four victims had particularly harsh, powerful words.
Philippe Braham was killed by Amedy Coulibaly, at the mere mention of his name.
His wife, in total dismay, explains that his “
three young children know a bad guy killed daddy, but they don't understand why.
Because their daddy was the nicest in the world.
What will I be able to tell them?
She says.
The pseudo-geopolitical explanations given by the killer make her jump.
“
Yes, there are conflicts between countries, but I have nothing to do with it, my husband has nothing to do with it!
I am angry and I will never forgive
, ”she assures us.
Yohan Cohen's father, who died at the age of 20, does not want to look at the accused or pronounce the name of the terrorist.
His loud voice filled the room.
"
This ease he had killed my son and the other people ... Why this gratuitous wickedness, this hatred?"
This hatred of the Jew?
I still can't figure it out, explain it
”.
“
Why this hatred?
".
The question is the same in the mouth of the father of Yoav Hattab, the young man shot while trying to take a weapon from Amedy Coulibaly.
Her sister calls out to the court, telling her to imagine what the hostages went through and in particular the dilemma of those who took refuge in the basement that Zarie came to look for, begging them to go up or else Coulibaly would kill those above. .
"
Yoav decided to go back up,
" she whispers.
“
In 2015, we saw the Shoah in a Hyper Hideout,
” she adds with a sob.
And then there is the more societal, political message from
Sophie, a survivor
.
"
This anti-Semitic attack is the work of a French Islamist terrorist
", she underlines, and this trial of accomplices is an opportunity to understand "
the networks of this hatred in our society, to educate and protect all citizens of these extremists
”.
"
The trial of anti-Semitism
"
This trial must have a social impact, it is obvious for the President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, civil party.
“
Anti-Semitism begins with the Jews, but never stops with the Jews,
” underlines Francis Kalifat, worried he said, for the values of the republic.
And to denounce both the trivialization of everyday anti-Semitism and the difficulty of living with what he calls the “
status of potential target of Islamist terrorism
”.
We cannot get used to having children greet armed police officers every day when they enter school, accept that this threat goes without saying, he denounces.
Before him, Noémie, a nurse survivor, had this terrible phrase on this same theme: “
I came to say that it wasn't just
the Charlie Hebdo attack
.
We have existed as much as Charlie, and it is not because we are Jewish that this attack is justified
”.
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