This is the end point of an extraordinary trial. The trial of the November 13 attacks, the longest criminal hearing in post-war French judicial history, ends this week with Monday morning the last words of the defendants who, like Salah Abdeslam, had a ultimate opportunity to speak before the special assize court of Paris retires to deliberate. The main defendant, the only member of the November 13 commandos still alive, explained to the court: “I recognized that I was not perfect, I made mistakes it’s true but I’m not a murderer, I’m not a killer. And if you condemn me for murder, you will commit an injustice .”
>> Trial of November 13: the logbook of an ex-hostage of the Bataclan, week 31
One more piece to the many exchanges supposed to answer the puzzle of the truth about these attacks which claimed 130 victims that evening, the deadliest attacks having hit France. Still, this “historic”, “exceptional” trial, which opened on September 8, will probably not have provided all the answers to the questions asked by the approximately 2,500 civil parties.
After these last words of the defendants and the “suspended” hearing, by the president of the court Jean-Louis Périès, as a last extraordinary challenge of this trial which is just as much, the court went to a military barracks to deliberate. The five professional magistrates who make up the special assize court and their four deputies are now confined, without the possibility of leaving, in this “secure” fortress and whose location is “kept secret”, until their verdict. We just know that they will be in Île-de-France and that meal trays will be served to them and that they will sleep, in fact, on the spot.
The location is kept secret for security reasons. As indicated @MathildeL75 on the air, we just know that they will be in Île-de-France. Meal trays will be served to them and they will sleep on site. #13november
— Catherine Fournier (@cathfournier) June 27, 2022
This impressive procedure is imposed by the Code of Criminal Procedure. SAccording to article 355 of the code, within the framework of the deliberations of the court of assizes, “the magistrates of the court and the jurors withdraw into the room of the deliberations. They cannot leave it only after having taken their decision”. Such an organization thus took place for the trial of Michel Fourniret in 2008, where the judges retired for a few hours to a CRS barracks in Charleville-Mézières, “so that the deliberation can be done in the best conditions“, then specified the magistrate in charge of the press.
This time, the deliberation should take about two and a half days. The magistrates must now answer dozens and dozens of specific questions on the case of each of the accused, and vote on small ballots immediately destroyed afterwards. Finally, they will have to determine the sentences to which they sentence the accused. This verdict, preceded by the reading of the Court’s reasons, is expected on Wednesday at the end of the day.
In addition to Salah Abdeslam, against whom incompressible life imprisonment was requested by the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office, life was requested against the four other defendants (Mohamed Abrini, Sofien Ayari, Osama Krayem and Mohamed Bakkali) who appear as “accomplices” in the killings at the Stade de France, the Bataclan and the terraces. Life was also claimed against five of the six defendants absent, and probably dead in the Iraqi-Syrian zone, including the alleged sponsor of the attacks, the Belgian Oussama Atar. The court is not bound by this indictment of the prosecution.