“The trial will plunge the victims back into this traumatic and painful story”, according to a lawyer

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The Nice attack trial “will plunge the victims back into this traumatic and painful story”according to Me Claire Josserand-Schmidt, the lawyer for 10 victims, Sunday September 4 on franceinfo, on the eve of the start of the hearing in Paris.

>>”I’m no longer afraid of trucks, I’m no longer afraid of the dark”: six years after the Nice attack, the children of July 14 bruised but alive

Eight people are on trial from Monday, September 5 before the special assize court, six years after the attack on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, July 14, 2016, which left 86 dead and thousands of physically and psychologically injured. . Three are tried for terrorist criminal association and five for having provided weapons to the assailant, who died on the evening of the incident.

franceinfo: How do the victims approach this start of the trial?

Me Claire Josserand-Schmidt: They have gone through these years trying to rebuild themselves and there the trial reactivates the pain of what happened, so it is not easy to approach this return in their lives. For us, trials follow one another, but for those who have lost parents, children, sometimes a leg or an arm, it’s been years that we had to go through to rebuild ourselves, to relive life differently and the trial goes plunging them back into this traumatic and painful story so obviously it’s complicated.

Many victims will come to attend the opening of the trial on Monday in Paris?

No, very little. The particularity of this case is that it mainly concerns victims from Nice, many foreign victims. The trial will last three and a half months, it’s still huge. It’s still a very long trial. Moving to Paris, being present in Paris, not everyone can afford it, people have their lives, their jobs, the children go to school so it will be complicated for them to come and attend the trial in Paris. Some will come at least at the beginning or at key dates, at times of the debates which will be particularly salient for them, but not permanently.

The sole perpetrator of the Nice attack, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was killed by the police on the evening of the incident. Eight other people will be tried. What does this trial represent?

For the victims who are waiting for justice to be done, the content of the box, the charges against the accused and the defendants, is important. It is not insignificant. There are among the defendants people against whom there are very important, very serious charges. I heard that it was a lawsuit to please the victims or offered to the victims, but that is not the case at all. They are judged for having known of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s involvement, his projects in general, his convictions, his adherence to the Islamic State, and even if they are not accused of having known precisely that they brought assistance for this specific attack, they are accused of having participated in a global project, this is what is called the association of terrorist criminals. There are three of them who appear for this, which is not nothing.

Will the personality of the attacker still be at the heart of the trial?

Yes, it is fundamental. The examination of the charges will be extremely meticulous. But if we reproach the three defendants prosecuted for terrorist association of criminals for joining the project of Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, then this project is at the heart of the debates, as well as its content, the seniority of its membership, the strength of its convictions and then his psychiatric profile of course to find out if he interfered in this debauchery of violence. Moreover, violence was at the heart of his life even before his jihadist involvement. He was an extremely violent man.

The questions about the security system put in place by the city of Nice on the evening of July 14, 2016 are the subject of a separate investigation and will not be addressed during this trial. Is this a good thing?

These are two different subjects. It is very good that this is the subject of an autonomous debate. I am a victims’ lawyer so obviously I am very attached to meeting their needs, their expectations, but I do not forget that we are summoned for a trial which is that of the accused, we are not on the trial of the city of Nice. We must not confuse the trials, we must separate things. It is out of the question to summon subjects and questions that are not the subject of the trial. This will allow the victims to tell their truth, to say what happened, to exercise their right as civil parties, to be heard as victims, but mainly it is the trial of the accused, we must check whether the charges are established and whether to declare them guilty.


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