(Paris) “When I was approached, I did not imagine that it would last nine months. No one here imagined it would last nine months. ”
Blond hair, the laughing eye behind his mask, Me Aurélie Cerceau does not hide that she is impressed by the scale of the trial of the November 13 attacks, which is being held at the Paris courthouse.
Yet she has seen others. Murders, rapes, white-collar crooks, Somali pirates. Criminal law is his specialty.
But after 20 years of practice, this Franco-Quebec lawyer had never, ever, participated in something so big.
It should be noted that the trial brings together 330 lawyers, 9 magistrates, 20 accused and more than 2,400 civil parties, for 1 million pages of proceedings, or the equivalent of approximately 53 linear km. Not to mention the imposing police force and the 550-seat courtroom, built especially for the occasion.
“Colossal”
ILLUSTRATION BENOIT PEYRUCQ, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
Court sketch of the courtroom, on the first day of the trial of the November 13 attacks, on September 8
“Everything is increased tenfold. Exacerbated. It is colossal. », She sums up, during a break between two witnesses.
Me Cerceau is a lawyer for four civil parties. Six years ago, his clients narrowly escaped the terrorist attacks that left 130 dead on the terraces, at the Stade de France and in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, on November 13, 2015.
Two of them were waiters at Le Carillon bar, where nine people were killed. The other two survived the carnage and hostage-taking that left 90 people dead at the Bataclan.
No lawyer, undoubtedly, would want to miss out on a trial which is rightly described as “historic”. But that’s not the only thing that pushed Aurélie Cerceau to represent survivors of that night of horror.
“The first one who came to see me touched me enormously,” she says. He came from North Africa. He was happy to have found work in a beautiful country. He had been in Paris for three months… I told myself that I couldn’t leave him alone. ”
The other reason is that she “wanted to understand”. Understand how young people who have a priori lacked nothing can switch overnight into hatred, to the point of committing such atrocious murders. Understand how the “unhappiness of a society can produce people who become radicalized”.
Beyond the law
For her, these reflections are essential from the beginning.
This trial, of course, is unlike anything she has ever experienced. Not only by its scale and duration, but also by its intensity. The traumas of the survivors run deep. Their needs go beyond the law.
In addition to managing disputes, we must manage emotions. One of my clients asks to see me every month. He wants to tell me what he’s becoming. It is not therapy. But since we have perfect knowledge of the matter, we are perhaps the ones who are best able to hear them.
Me Aurélie Cerceau, lawyer for four civil parties at the trial of the November 13 attacks
Some feel guilty for having survived. They do not expect anything in particular, but want people to know that “their life has changed forever”, underlines Me Hoop.
Others are still trying to understand. This trial is for them a way to get answers to the questions that have obsessed them for six years.
Response from the accused first (“They want these people to hear their pain. Let them explain why they did that”), but also from the State, which could perhaps have prevented these attacks.
ELISABETH ILLUSTRATION BY POURQUERY, FRANCE TELEVISIONS, VIA REUTERS
The accused, on the first day of the trial of the November 13 attacks, on September 8
All hope for “fair and final” sentences, in the hope of finally turning the page, adds the lawyer. Of the 20 defendants (only 14 present in the box), 11 risk life imprisonment, including Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the terrorist commandos. The other 9 sentences range from 6 to 20 years imprisonment.
Note that the French state pays the lawyers of the civil parties, some of whom have more than a hundred clients, in other words the jackpot on the fees side. A tenth of their legal aid will, however, be paid to defense lawyers, who are around thirty.
From Brossard to Paris
Aurélie Cerceau has been working on this file for the last six years, to say the least, “taking”, which she is leading simultaneously with other cases. She doesn’t complain about it. For this lawyer born in Quebec to French parents, this step is a “major event” in her career.
Raised in Brossard, Aurélie Cerceau made her way to Paris through the French College of Longueuil and the College Marie-de-France in Montreal. In 1994, not yet of age, she headed for France, which she knew little about and where she wanted to study law.
His stay was to last three years, but life decides otherwise. After winning a renowned eloquence competition (the Internship Conference), she was picked up by a Parisian law firm where she discovered a passion for criminal law.
Then she meets her French husband and settles for good in France.
For real ? Well, maybe not… He misses Quebec a lot. So much so that she will pass her Quebec bar in 2011, with the idea that one day she could return to the fold to practice.
“I would love to,” she said. My heart stayed there. The story is to follow.
A “laboratory” trial
The trial of the November 13 attacks not only stands out for its duration and scale. It is also a “laboratory, as is often the case in historical trials”, underlines Antoine Megie, of the University of Rouen. This researcher, who follows the event for the Jupiter project, notes that many new things have been created and thought “according to the number of civil parties”, which amounts to more than 2400. An unprecedented circulation system has thus was created to handle the flow of witnesses, in a state-of-the-art courtroom built especially for the occasion. Another novelty: a closed-circuit Internet radio station allows the civil parties to listen to the proceedings without having to go there, while a psychological assistance service is offered to them out of court. Some of these devices could become the norm in future “extraordinary” trials, concludes Antoine Megie.
Visit the Jupiter project site