Trial of November 13: "It was worth living this marathon to arrive at fair requisitions", reacts a survivor of the Bataclan

Solène Delinger 11:50 a.m., June 11, 2022

INTERVIEW

At the trial of the November 13 attacks, the Advocates General requested incompressible life imprisonment for Salah Abdeslam, the main accused.

This is the heaviest penalty provided by the Penal Code.

"Salah Abdeslam remained faithful to his ideology until the end and unable to express the slightest remorse. He is far from having shown an abandonment of this voluntary servitude," said Advocate General Camille Hennetier.

Invited to the microphone of Europe 1, Arthur Dénouveaux, survivor of the Bataclan and president of the association Life for Paris, confides his emotion and his satisfaction. 

“French society was well represented in this trial”

“It feels good to get to this phase,” he explains.

"It's good to hear these requisitions and it's also good to hear all this pedagogy from the general attorneys who really detailed for each of the defendants why and how they arrived at the final requisition. And we could hear that these months of hearings have changed the vision that the general attorneys had of some of the defendants concerned. It was worth living this marathon for all these months to arrive at fair requisitions".

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The sentences required range from five years to irreducible life imprisonment.

For Arthur Dénouveaux, the magistrates succeeded in embodying justice without ever taking the light personally.

"And that was very important. The strength of this trial is also to say that it is the rule of law that reacts to terrorism. I think they have reconciled many victims with justice and I hope that it goes beyond the circle of civil parties and that French society as a whole is proud somewhere to have been so well represented, "he says. 

Reinsurance in the French social pact

"What is quite incredible is that normal justice has shown that it is capable of judging what is most abnormal, namely the deadliest attack on French soil that has ever been committed “, he continues.

"And that is beautiful and we could have doubted that. You remember that there had been declarations by political leaders speaking of acts of war, but acts of war, they are not judged by a normal court. And there, we showed that we had a penal code which was up to the stakes, that we had a specially composed assize court, which was capable of coping with a trial of such duration , that we had well-trained magistrates, investigation services and so on. And that is reassurance in the social contract, in the French social pact, which is very important because that is precisely what what terrorism was aiming for on November 13. And it may have wavered at the time, but it didn't give up".