Trial of November 13: the weight and the abyss of psychic wounds
Lawyers and participants arrive at the special hearing room on September 8, 2021, at the opening of the trial of the November 13 attacks in Paris.
AP - Thibault Camus
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Third day of pleadings for the lawyers of the civil parties in the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015. This Wednesday, May 25, after having evoked the various places of the attacks the day before, the lawyers chose to speak about the injuries of the victims.
Those that we see and the invisible wounds that do not hurt less.
Record of hearing.
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Of course, there are physical injuries.
“
Mortal 130 times
” on November 13, recalls Me Bibal in the introduction.
And then there are the mental injuries.
“
Already deadly twice.
" Two survivors with a psyche in pieces and who committed suicide in 2017 and 2021. "
As much as he is not made to receive Kalashnikov bullets, the human being is not made to be confronted with his own death
,” said a lawyer.
For the direct victims, there was first the anguish.
The paralyzing anguish of their impending death.
For their loved ones, there was concern.
Phones ringing in the void and unanswered messages, thousands of calls to hospitals for news of a loved one.
With sometimes, she recalls, terrible errors: it is announced that a victim is dead when she is alive.
Or even worse, the exact opposite.
And there is the after: post-traumatic stress.
“
This bad fellow traveler pursues the victim, night, day, at work, with family, from mind to body, he is omnipresent.
“
The victims, direct, indirect, all the victims, are condemned to live with this malaise,
advance Me Isabelle Teste
, sentenced to life imprisonment, while they are innocent.
»
The lawyers returned to the guilt too widely felt by the victims: to apologize for still being alive, when so many others are dead;
forgiveness, to apologize for not being hurt when so many others are bruised in their flesh.
The guilt of not having been heroes.
“
She is terrible, that one
”, said Me Aurélie Coviaux.
The shame of having fled, let go of the hand of a dying man.
Trampled bodies to get out, forgetting friends in a panic.
"
They are their own prosecutor
," said the lawyer.
“
We, people of law, are powerless to judge the innocent.
So the lawyers again remind the victims that they are victims.
And expect the judgment and its motivations to say, clearly and once and for all, who are the victims and who are the culprits.
►
To read:
the minutes of the hearing of the trial of the attacks of November 13
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France
Paris attacks
Trial of the attacks of November 13
Justice
Terrorism