• France Salah Abdeslam declares in trial for the Bataclan attacks that he is a "fighter of the Islamic State"

  • Attack The mother of a Spaniard killed in Bataclan confronts the accused: "Without arms you are nothing"

It has been unusual.

And controversial.

Even answered by some lawyers.

But, finally, after a long debate, François Hollande has testified as a witness in the trial for the

Islamist attacks of November 13, 2015

in Paris in which 130 people died when he was President of the Republic.

Hollande has taken the stand to

dismantle the thesis of the

Islamic State

terrorists

who justified their savage attack on the Bataclan room and several cafes in

retaliation for the French bombings in Syria:

"They attacked us because of our way of life here,

not because of our actions abroad. Not because of what we did but because of what we represented, an open society. "

"Democracy will always be stronger than barbarism," concluded the former head of state in his first statement, which began with a memory for the victims of "that fatal night."

The former socialist president answers questions from the parties.

In the immense courtroom in Paris where the macro trial is taking place, today under even more drastic security measures than usual, Hollande speaks a few meters from Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the jihadist commandos that perpetrated one of the largest terrorist actions in the West.

"François Hollande knew the risks he was running attacking the Islamic State

in Syria," said the 32-year-old Frenchman when he spoke.

He added that in attacking "civilians" in France, "there was nothing personal."

In September he was even more explicit: "When François Hollande made the decision to attack the Islamic State, he knew very well that his decision carried risks.

When the United States asked France to attack Iraq, Jacques Chirac refused to support him. He said it would provoke hatred against France. and bloody attacks.

And that's what happened. "

Abdeslam elaborated in court what the Bataclan terrorists said as they unloaded their firearms on those attending the evening.

"It is your president's fault. You kill us there, we kill you here."

Two terrorists from the command, Fouet Mohamed Aggad and Ismael Omar Mostefaï, made the hostages they had in the box sit in line to ask them who they had voted for in the 2012 presidential elections.

"I would make the same decisions"

Hollande has rejected the tit-for-tat thesis: "I'd make the same decisions." The researchers had previously disassembled it. The first French bombings in Syria were at the end of September 2015. At that time, the kamikazes who attacked in Paris were recruited and training. In addition, France had already suffered the

Hyper Cacher

attack

,

which took place in January 2015. Then there was another against a church and the frustrated assault by the passengers of the terrorist Thalys train from Brussels to Paris.

Hollande was attending the friendly soccer match between the teams of France and Germany that night of November 13, 2015. When

a kamikaze blew up outside the Stade de France,

the president was evacuated. Before special forces stormed the Bataclan room, Hollande had already addressed the nation describing the situation as

"a horror".

During the night he decreed a state of emergency throughout the national territory.

"I fully assume the decisions that were made that night. They were appropriate," said the former president this afternoon. Hollande admitted that France had received threats but that his services did not have precise information:

"We did not know where, when and how they were going to attack us," he

said when asked by the President of the Court, Jean Louis Périès.

"We knew that there were operations in preparation" and that

among the flow of refugees arriving in Europe from Syria there were infiltrated terrorists, he

added.

Hollande admitted that there had been a specific threat against the Bataclan ward, where 90 of the 130 victims were massacred.

But it was in 2009 and for anti-Semitic reasons.

"I myself gave a rally in the Chamber during a campaign and nobody said anything to me."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Paris

  • Syria

  • François Hollande

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  • Brussels bombings

  • Terrorism

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