the personalities of the accused examined, but not yet the facts

On Saturday November 6, nine weeks have passed since the start of the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015 before the special assize court in Paris. The trial is due to last until May 2022. This week was devoted to the personal interviews of the 14 defendants present.

The trial of the November 13 attacks has entered its ninth week, before the special assize court in Paris. A week devoted to the interrogations of personalities of the 14 accused. One after the other, they had to answer questions from the Court and the civil parties on their childhood, their education, their professional and love life, and also their detention. The exercise is delicate: it is a question of evoking their lives without “overflow on the bottom” of the file which will not be addressed until 2022. And this is a frustration for many people.

President Jean-Louis Périès had warned, as of Tuesday, November 2: no question of addressing the facts, nor religion. These subjects will be examined next January during the other interrogation of the accused. Very often this week, when one of them spoke for example of his father imam or of such a trip to Egypt, he had to be interrupted so as not to “overflow”. A fustration for the many civil parties who follow the debates with the curiosity to discover the profiles of these men in the box. “We are dealing with people who seem banal, who describe their family life as simple and happy”, testifies Theodora, in her twenties. The young girl lost her uncle on the terrace of the café La Bonne Bière. “They almost look like altar boys, in fact … We want to know the rest and what made them rock … We also wonder how the families of these defendants react.”

Salah Abdeslam like the others calmly lent himself to the exercise of the personality questioning. Like the others, he spoke of his childhood, happy, his schooling, average. Showing a completely different face, much less rebellious than in September when, at the opening of the trial, he proudly presented himself as a Daesh fighter, assuming the attacks in the name of a “revenge” after French bombings in Syria.

His childhood friend Mohamed Abrini was also quite verbose in his answers. “Mohamed Abrini was rather spontaneous. He answers everything, he does not play a game. He submits to the rules of the Assize Court”, comments his lawyer Me Marie Violleau. This interrogation “show everyone that it’s a human being.” The accused “have parents, brothers and sisters. They went to school, sometimes even to college. They worked, they have pay slips”. But Marie Violleau regrets that the calendar is cut from “somewhat artificial way”.

“I find it unfortunate that we weren’t able to address the religious aspect. Their personality is necessarily linked to the facts and their personality is necessarily linked to their faith.”

Me Marie Violleau, lawyer for Mohamed Abrini

to franceinfo

This week of interrogation was also an opportunity to see that among the 14 defendants present, there are men with very different degrees of involvement in the attacks. From the small dealer with a clean record who compared free and risks six years in prison for having gone to look for Salah Abdeslam in Paris on the night of the attacks, to senior officials of the Islamic State who face life imprisonment.