Families plunged into horror and six years of unsaid: here is what emerges from the last three weeks at the trial of the Nice attack, before the special assize court in Paris. Three weeks of testimony from civil parties: mothers, brothers, children recount this July 14, 2016, when a terrorist killed 86 people and injured hundreds with his truck, on the Promenade des Anglais.
>> “The attack is only the beginning of the tsunami”: the shattered lives of children traumatized by the attack of July 14, 2016 in Nice
Many of the victims were with their families that evening, and it was also with their families that they came to testify in Paris. Bilel, 24, his parents and sisters took over the helm on Friday October 8: they were at the July 14 fireworks display, he joined them just after the attack. “It’s really the whole family who suffered the consequences of this July 14, he testifies. And suddenly, for us, it was very important to meet all here, at the same time, so that everyone is there, for each other. And to hug each other.
However, in this close-knit family, silence has settled for six years, in the wake of the truck. “In all the moments we spent together as a family, we tried not to talk about the attack: it was a taboo subject, explains Bill. Everyone was still too traumatized, Ifelt like I was living with wrecks at home. At each moment of happiness, like a meal or an outing, we ended up talking about the attack, saying to ourselves that we had almost lost the family, or my father who said to me: ‘You almost ended up an orphan.’ It was just little sentences that we threw around like that, without going into details. We all learned here, at the trial, what we had to say to each other…”
“There was this need to talk about it in the place where justice is done” confirms Olfa, the 36-year-old big sister. She is very marked by the guilt of her youngest, who was not on the walk. “I didn’t know the guilt my little sister felt, I didn’t know she felt so distressed that she couldn’t save us from our demons over the attack, she explains. She apologizes, even though she has done a lot, and she doesn’t realize it. I feel guilty too: it’s easy to tell others that they don’t have to feel guilty. But deep down, in fact, we are invaded by an enormous guilt.
Olfa, her two-year-old daughter in 2016, and her family came home alive that night. La Niçoise thinks of the bereaved victims. She listens to them on the trial web radio. “It inevitably awakens memories, empathy, Olfa continues. When I hear a mother talking about the fact that she buried her daughter who was almost the same age as mine… My daughter, at the time, I thought I saw her die. We identify a lot with those we hear.” “Listening to other testimonies is very painful, continues Olfa, but it is paradoxically at the same time reassuring to tell ourselves that we are not totally disconnected when we experience this pain. It is real and it is common to all. It is sometimes complicated, but necessary. There is even a kind of duty of support.”
A comforting solidarity for his brother Bilel. He follows the hearings in the broadcast room in Nice, at the Acropolis Palace, every day at first, but after three weeks of victims’ accounts, he can no longer bear it.
“It’s really a slap in the face: when I follow the trial, I often break down. I’ve become hypersensitive about the death since the attack: I can’t stand to see someone mourning the death of someone, for example.”
Bilel cites as an example the Borla family, who were on the evening of the attack on the Promenade des Anglais and whose daughter, Laura, thirteen and a half years old, died that evening. “We see them every day in Acropolis [le palais des congrès de Nice,où sont retransmises les audiences] and their testimony completely crushed me, remembers Bill. I left the room, I cried. Many people came to support me, to comfort me I was not looking for help and I found it anyway.
“We, the victims and civil parties, see each other as one big family, describes the young man. That is to say that even if we do not know each other, we have all experienced the trauma of the same experience. And since we share this thing, it creates strong bonds.” Bilel therefore continues to follow the trial, with his family and the other victims, in search of answers. They expect a lot from the hearings on Monday of François Hollande, Bernard Cazeneuve and François Molins, the former presidents, interior minister and prosecutor in charge of anti-terrorism. After these hearings on Monday, the civil parties will continue to testify for another two weeks.