• The trial of the terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015 opened for nine months, Wednesday September 8, 2021, before the specially composed assize court in Paris.

  • This Friday, investigators from the anti-terrorism section of the criminal brigade detailed the findings at Bataclan at length.

  • They also broadcast the beginning of a recording of the killing. 

At the specially composed Assize Court in Paris,

Suddenly, a silence settles. Heavy, even suffocating. A short sound sample of the first seconds of the Bataclan attack on the evening of November 13, 2015, is about to be broadcast in the specially composed assize court. Precisely 22 seconds during which we hear the dry noises of the Kalashnikovs abruptly interrupting the concert of the Eagles of Death Metal. Several bursts of fire in a few moments, followed by screams. Among the dozens of civil parties who came this Friday to attend the hearing, only a handful left the room. The others huddle together on the benches, listen, head down, death is coming without warning.

"These 22 seconds, it seems like an eternity", blows at the bar Patrick Bourbotte, the police officer of the anti-terrorism section of the criminal brigade who coordinated the findings in the concert hall. It has already been nearly three hours since the investigator, shaved head, elegantly dressed in a gray suit, meticulously delivered all the details of this crime scene of such magnitude that he had to proceed "as if on an area. plane crash ”. It details the location of the bodies of the 71 people killed in the concert hall, the 14 others shot in the vicinity (five others died from their injuries in hospital). There, “eight entangled bodies seized by death at the same time”. Near the bar, these four men and three women whose "one has the impression of an individual execution. »The arrangement of bodies,the type of wounds make it possible to retrace the path of terrorists.

"You are going to be in horror for quite a while"

Sector by sector, the investigator identifies the hundreds of nuts that have escaped from the explosive belts, the 258 bullets struck, the three Kalashnikovs and the magazines taped two by two to "reload more quickly". He describes the bodies of the jihadists in several pieces, torn to pieces by the activation of their belts. He and his teams spent nearly 8 hours on the evening of the attack, making these initial findings. Patrick Bourbotte will return to the Bataclan daily for two months to search every gap in the building. It will thus take 14 days to find one of the legs of a terrorist who landed under the scene. "My dread was to miss a wounded victim who would have put himself, by a spirit of conservation, in a mouse hole," he confides with a tight throat. Moments earlier,a photo of a false ceiling smashed in by spectators to hide in the attic of the building was projected on the giant screen.

But this soundtrack, extracted from a dictaphone, is necessary, according to him, to understand the "abrupt side of barbarism".

At the helm, he does not hide his emotion and tells of his astonishment - "there are no other words" when he walks through the doors around 5 am.

Phones ringing in the void, bags strewn about, clotted blood he has no choice but to step on.

“We step over bodies, and bodies, and bodies.

"He often thinks of this colleague from the BRI, who took part in the assault on the terrorists and whispered in his ear, just before he entered:" Good luck, you are going to be in horror. a hell of a time.

"

"Lie down or I shoot"

If the extract broadcast this afternoon lasts only a few seconds, the band captured the 2 hours 38 minutes and 47 seconds that the attack lasted, from the arrival of the terrorists in the middle of the concert to to the final assault. First, burst shots and then piecemeal until, 32 minutes after the start of the attack, the hostage-taking of a dozen spectators began. At the bar, the policeman tells about the cruelty of the terrorists who shout at one "lie down or I'll shoot", at the other "get up or I'll kill you", injunctions sometimes followed by shots. From the 8th minute, he explains again, the terrorists explain acting in retaliation for the intervention in Iraq and Syria. "You elected François Hollande, here is your campaign", "you can only blame your president who plays the cowboy. "

Elements that echo the words spoken Wednesday by Salah Abdeslam.

“We targeted the population, civilians, but there was nothing personal about them.

We targeted France (…) because the French planes which bombard the Islamic State do not make distinctions between men, women, children, they destroy everything in their path, ”he said. court.

This time, he remains silent, just like his co-defendants, and listens to the investigator recount this war scene.

Justice

Trial of the November 13 attacks: "We targeted France", claims Salah Abdeslam

Justice

Trial of the November 13 attacks: The "total" and "extraordinary" investigation dissected by an anti-terrorism police officer

  • Terrorism

  • Bataclan

  • Trial

  • Attacks of November 13

  • Justice