From Tuesday to Friday, the fourteen accused responded at length to their personality interrogation in front of the Paris Special Assize Court. Perilous exercise because it should not be addressed the background. But it made it possible to sketch life paths.
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The first impression was that of a scene that would have suddenly changed the lighting. Actors hitherto frozen in the shadow screwed and agreed. So there were defense lawyers. So there were prosecutors. Five weeks of deposition of survivors and relatives of the victims who died in the attacks of 13 November 2015 had erased them. And above all, there were accused.
From Tuesday 2 to Friday, November 5th, during their question of personality in front of the Paris Special Assize Court, these fourteen men spoke. Often long. All have agreed to answer the questions of those who judge them, of those who accuse them and those who address the civil parties. It looks like nothing, said like that, but it already means a lot. The advice of their lawyers have no doubt contributed. But we can not help but think – to hope? – that on the accused too, the testimonies of the survivors weighed.
They spoke and they were listened to. This “Monsieur” who preceded each question addressed to the accused, these “Mr President”, “Madam The Assessor”, “Mr” or “Madam Prosecutor” who accompanied the answers, gave the exchanges a mutual tone of respect. As it seemed far, this first day of the trial, on the 8th of September, where Salah Abdeslam replied in a hostile tone to President Jean-Louis Rires who simply asked him to decline his identity and the name of his parents: “First I to testify that there is no divinity apart from Allah and Mohamed is his servant and his messenger. The name of my father and that of my mother have nothing to do here. “Tuesday, November 7, then that it was explained on an incident in Morocco for which he had been placed a few months in detention – wrong with him – Salah Abdeslam spontaneously left out: “Justice in Morocco, it has nothing to do with here . “
a blurred border
Of course, this is only the personality interrogation. The exercise is both agreed, a little artificial and especially terribly constrained since it must not at any time address the substance of the file to which five months of hearing will be enshrined. For everyone, so it was necessary to cut the biography according to the dotted lines. The birth, the rank in an often large sibling, the teen football club, chaotic and shortened schooling, small jobs – pastry chef, semi-large counterfeiting supplier, buyer and dealer of cars, mover, worker Building, sandwich manager, surface technician, server in a quick, goldfinch breeder – okay. Love and conjugal life, it’s still going. With travel, it starts complicating. The questions are allowed on certain destinations, but they must not extend over others, Egypt, Turkey or Syria. Religious education received or not during childhood, again agree. The highlighting of certain behaviors likely to testify to a rocking to radical Islam, disagree. Religion is the bottom.
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