the hearings told every day in drawings because “testifying is a moral duty”

After nine months of hearings interspersed with interruptions due in particular to the cases of Covid-19, the trial of the attacks of November 13 has entered the final stretch. After the indictment of the Advocates General last week, the defense lawyers begin their pleadings on Monday, June 13.

They will be followed, like the previous hearings, by a civil party like no other. Initially, she is a survivor of the terraces who came to attend the first days of hearing out of curiosity. Then she became the one who reports on the trial on social networks both with rigor and humor through comic strips. At the trial, everyone nicknamed her “Babou”, her nickname on Twitter and Instagram where she presents herself as “expert in doodling to talk about serious things”. Her real name Bahareh Akrami, she is 39 years old, works in communication and has always loved to draw.

On the evening of November 13, 2015 on the Carillon terrace, pregnant, Bahareh, her spouse and her friends miraculously escaped the bullets of the terrorists. She filed a civil action to be with the victims: “At the beginning, I had just planned to come once or twice a month. I hadn’t planned to do a diary at all. But to stay there for six, seven hours in a row, arms hanging, silent. .. it’s complicated and very frustrating. So I started taking notes, it allowed me to regain control and tell the story.”

Babou’s notes became, for nine months, boards delivered every evening on the networks. With her tablet, her drawing software, her humor and her derision, she illustrates the audiences. Four boards each day. What is said in the room is faithfully transcribed there, but she also delivers what she feels.

“I had feedback from civil parties, who told me that it was good for them, that it allowed them to follow while not being too dark, too heavy. It touches me a lot.”

Babou is having fun with the McDo that Abdeslam ate just after having given up on triggering his explosive belt, she laughs at the defense lawyers: when, annoyed, they leave the room as one man, she compares them to Adèle Haenel. Babou’s drawings have become essential for the small community that has been created around the trial: civil parties, lawyers, journalists.

The young woman even has the paternity of the nickname given to the president of the assize court: “I like to put myself in his head. It was I who renamed him Loulou. His name is Jean-Louis (Periès Editor’s note), I found Loulou cute. During the testimonies he was very empathetic with us. It’s affectionate, and it’s stuck: now everyone calls it that!”

Babou who, at the start of the trial, was looking for his place in the huge courtroom, found it thanks to his drawings. She hopes to publish the entirety, a way for her to ward off her survivor’s guilt: “Even today, I don’t feel like a victim. I was there at the wrong time in the wrong place and I was lucky. I say to myself: you were in that bar, you got away with it, you owe something to the other victims first, and then to society. Testifying is a bit of a moral duty.”

Babou must follow the trial and transcribe it until its end. Verdict expected on June 29.