the logbook of a former Bataclan hostage, week 28

Since September 8, 2021 the trial of the attacks of November 13 is held in Paris. David Fritz-Goeppinger, victim of these attacks is now a photographer and author. He agreed to share via this logbook his feelings, in image and in writing, during the long months of this river trial, which began on Wednesday September 8, 2021 before the special assize court in Paris. Here is his account of the 28th week of hearing.

>> The journal of the twenty-seventh week

Monday May 30. I continue to pass almost daily in front of this cafe where I stopped the first days of hearing. I well remember those double espressos I ordered, the “Hello how are you ?” discreet from the boss who sometimes glanced at my civil party badge. So, I know, I’m talking about this as if it were an anecdote from ten years ago rather than nine months, but at the same time, doesn’t a month here equal a year? This small Parisian café has turned into a trendy brasserie and the double espressos have become bland cafes in the sanctuary.

On the portrait, it is Carole Damiani, director of the association Paris Assistance to victims (PAV). The association (as its name suggests) provides assistance to the victims of collective events thanks to logistical and human support. Since the start of the hearing, a veritable fleet of psychologists in navy blue chasubles has been present in the main room. Generally installed at the back, they are there to listen and support victims, journalists and anyone else who feels the need. As guardians of our sanity. But the mission of the PAV includes many other aspects, such as information on the rights of victims but also creating a link with the Paris Bar, so that survivors can find advice from lawyers. I often cross paths with Carole in the sanctuary, and one day promised her that she would have her place here given the central place of the association within V13.

I didn’t come last Wednesday. Too tired psychologically to follow the hearing and hear the lawyers plead. Too tired to be able to protect myself. Because it takes energy to succeed in not absorbing all the load that monitoring audiences inflicts, consistency and regularity do not help, habit is only an illusion. It’s been a year now since I started the sport and I now know that the body takes three weeks to get used to the effort. So I wonder. How many years did it take me to get used to my pain? How many years will it take me to “move on” ? Will I even get there? It fascinates me, only three weeks to get used to sweating liters, aches, effort, but so many years to even understand my pain.

As I left the Palace on Tuesday, I allowed myself a last moment of exposure to the audience. I am at home, my ear glued to the speakers of my computer to hear one of my two lawyers: Master Lemont. Arrived in 2019 at the office of Aurélie Coviaux, he surprised me, a year ago during a pretrial meeting by the depth of his knowledge of the facts and the history of the Bataclan attack. So far, everyone I’ve met who was this close to the truth was a victim. Hugo Lemont is not one, but a lawyer who embraced our night head-on. So I imagine him coming forward and his black dress flying behind him. His voice, slightly trembling, then resounds in the web radio. I know him a little bit and I know however that this is not a sign of emotion, but rather of an underlying fervor that will carry him throughout his argument. From the start, he points to the million pages he knows practically by heart: “You seized on it during the debates, seeking to reconstruct the crime scene, in time and space, contrary to an overly partial work carried out during the criminal investigation.” Hugo Lemont then continues and therefore offers a reconstruction to the nearest millimeter (coming from his own understanding of the file) of the evening at the Bataclan: “In short, the voices and bullets of the assassins make it possible to determine the path they took in this immense room. These objective procedural elements will allow you to specify the thousands of accounts of victims quoted in procedure, or delivered orally before you. , that they are vague, precise, that some contradict each other, that others forget each other.” Now unstoppable, the lawyer goes so far as to offer a re-reading of the facts, analyzed and taken from the victims’ stories and, each time, taken up by the investigation file. I will not spread it here, because it would take many lines to detail the content. But again, my lawyer surprises me.

In my living room, my cat is taking a nap and I hear cars parking in the street. Outside, the day is coming to an end. In the speakers the voice of the lawyer continues to resonate. Every word, every sentence seems to be weighed, measured before finally being spoken so that it bumps into the corners of the courtroom. About the victims present in the “old theatre”, he says : “The Bataclan is the tomb of 90 human persons, but it is also a field of heroes in the sense that all the individual and collective acts of the hundreds of surviving victims, of the non-specialized police, if they did not allow to defend themselves from the massacre, made it possible to avoid the slaughter desired by the terrorists. Etymologically, the sacrifice of a hundred.” And he hammers: “The victims as recounted before your Court, as detailed in the minutes of the proceedings, I am convinced that they demonstrate that they were not only the passive seat of a terrible damage which been inflicted within the meaning of Article 2. They were also those active elements of their own survival, the heroes of their own existence, and in law, they are that circumstance external to the terrorist author which made it possible to interrupt , to thwart the perpetration of the assassination attempts.”

Although I know most of the stories of quiet heroism related to November 13, I’ve never seen them that way. Without warning, my eyes blur. As if I had just realized, after seven years of suffering: “I think I fought from the start.” Hearing those words swept away what little composure I had left. I find myself alone, crying in my apartment. How can a simple sentence uttered by a lawyer affect me to such an extent? I do not know. But master Lemont has not finished and concludes with a list of thoughts addressed to the victims of the Bataclan: “In doing so, they all showed the way, the exit, the hiding place, the will to live, they faced, they opposed the death scenario that was proposed to them, imposing. Much more, they hindered a assassination attempt.”

I keep writing it, saying it, but there is not a day when I am not surprised at the hearing (well, in this case, I was at home). Master Lemont’s words will undoubtedly remain the strongest I have heard in a long time. It is Monday, May 30 when I write these words and I have just received the notes from my lawyer. On the 31-page PDF document, numerous erasures, notes and highlights make me understand that I am not mistaken: all the words have been weighed.

As I write, I listen to the lawyers plead and watch each of them address today’s themes: “The freedom to hate and not to hate”, “Love”, “Memory” and finally the “Freedom to create” On this last theme, the surprise again, when Master Maugendre refers to the various creations of civil parties: books, blogs, drawings, comics, plays… and adds: “Creation is resistance to oppression, creation is the standard of life.” The lawyer lists many works and in the middle, my book, a day in our life and “The Logbook of an Ex-Bataclan Hostage.” I then think of the title of Indochine which inspired me the title of my (I hope) first book, and the words resonate in my mind, the music, the rock, always: “The dream will continue”.

To conclude his argument, the lawyer decides to quote another, from another terrorism trial: “The future is not virtual. The future is the deliberation of your course, the conclusion of six years of investigation and ten months of trial. The disappearance of this weight will leave an immeasurable place for the wounds that I call the post-trial gap.” I am finishing this post as new lawyers come forward to plead and address the following topics: children, music, party-dancing-football and finally the taste of fun.

For my part, I am leaving the Palace.

Until tomorrow.

*Article 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure: the civil action for compensation for damage caused by a crime, an offense or a contravention belongs to all those who have personally suffered the damage directly caused by the offence. Waiver of civil action cannot stop or suspend the exercise of public action, except in the cases referred to in paragraph 3 of article 6.