Commemorations of November 13th | Paris pays tribute to the victims in the midst of a trial

(Paris) Six years after the horror, several tributes were paid Saturday by the authorities in Paris and Saint-Denis, in the suburbs of the French capital, to commemorate the attacks of November 13, in a highly symbolic atmosphere at the time when the trial of these attacks is taking place.

Accompanied in particular by the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, French Prime Minister Jean Castex began the tour of tributes with a wreath laying followed by a minute of silence in front of the Stade de France, before heading for the café terraces. and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, where commandos guided by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) had killed 130 people and left more than 350 injured in 2015, sowing terror in the country.

For her part, the Vice-President of the United States, Kamala Harris, who completed a four-day visit to France on Saturday, deposited a bouquet of white flowers shortly after noon in front of the terrace of the bar Le Carillon. She then crossed the street to enter the facility briefly.

This series of tributes ended in the evening with a minute of silence before the kick-off of the France-Kazakhstan match at the Parc des Princes in Paris.

A group of French supporters then unfurled a tribute banner “To our 131 stars of November 13” from a stand at the 15^e minute of the match, in reference to the moment when the first of the two bombs exploded six years ago near the Stade de France, during the France-Germany match.

In front of the Bataclan, the survivors and relatives of the victims listened with emotion to the resounding in the grayness of the names of the 90 people killed in the concert hall.

After a ceremony without an audience in 2020 because of the pandemic, the commemoration seems more important than ever, in parallel with a historic trial which since September has revived in great detail the memory of the deadliest terrorist attack ever committed in France.

“Last year, we were banned from coming and we all experienced it very badly. This year, there is a real need to come together, reinforced by the trial, ”says Bruno Poncet in front of Le Bataclan.

“We created real links thanks to the trial,” continues this survivor. “During previous commemorations, we met from afar without daring to talk to each other too much, there was a real shyness. The passages at the helm changed everything. ”

After his testimony before the Assize Court in early October, the forty-something continues to attend the trial. “It’s impossible for me to stop, it’s our lives that we’re talking about in this room, and it’s important to come to support others and try to get our heads out of the water. ”

Post-traumatic stress disorder, guilt of the survivor, persistent gap with the rest of society … For a month, the testimonies of the victims and their relatives revealed the indelible scars and the extent of the psychological damage of these attacks on hundreds of broken lives.

To face the rest of the trial, which must continue until the end of May, “people feel that we have to stick together”, summarizes Arthur Dénouveaux, the president of the association of victims Life for Paris.

” Marker pen ”

This year, his association registers about fifty additional participants in the ceremony it organizes at the town hall of 11^e arrondissement, Parisian district hit by the attacks, after the various tributes.

“The trial undoubtedly reinforced the need to be together”, confirms Philippe Duperron, president of the other association of victims, 13onze15 Fraternité et Truth. “In the courtroom, there were looks, outstretched hands, we felt a lot of solidarity. ”

His organization has also registered more registrants than usual for the official post-ceremony lunch.

This year, “the commemoration is a marker of the great shared narrative that is currently being constructed at the trial”, observes historian Denis Peschanski, co-head of the “November 13 Program”, a vast research project that studies evolution. of the memory of the attacks over ten years.

The hearing days and their transcription in the press “influence the collective memory of the French” and made it possible “to complete the puzzle with pieces that we did not yet know”, he notes.

Its research, carried out with a representative sample of the French population, shows that beyond the carnage of the Bataclan, the trial notably “brought back the places of November 13th in their entirety”, thanks to the testimonies of the victims of the Stade de France and terraces that the general public gradually tended to forget.

Six years after these attacks, the terrorist threat remains very high in France, but is now taking new forms.

As shown by the assassinations of police officer Stéphanie Monfeture in April in Rambouillet near Paris, or of teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020, it is now carried by more “autonomous” assailants whose link with organizations terrorists – who no longer systematically claim their actions – has largely relaxed.