Now, after 10 months of painful testimony from victims and the missing, judges will return their verdicts on Wednesday. But beyond condemnation, the trial platform for survivors to speak has been hailed as a crucial step in France facing its collective trauma from the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and injured more than 490 . In coordinated attacks blamed on Islamic State, suicide bombers struck first outside the national sports stadium, followed by shootings and suicide bombings targeting cafes and restaurants where people were out on Friday night. Finally, a gun attack on Bataclan during an Eagles of Death Metal rock concert killed 90 people. A prosecutor at the trial said France had come close to “assembling the puzzle” of the attacks. Almost all of the 10 men who hit the city died that night, either by committing suicide or being killed by police fire. The only survivor is Salah Abdeslam, a French citizen born in Brussels, whose suicide vest was found thrown in a bin, with investigators saying it was “defective”, but he says he backed down at the last minute and fled. Abdeslam is the main defendant in a total of 20 suspects accused of providing design and logistical support. The court sketch made on June 27, 2022 shows the accused Salah Abdeslam (right) standing next to 13 other defendants. Photo: Benoît Peyrucq / AFP / Getty Images However, it was the intense reports of the trial of the personal pain and resilience of the survivors and mourners – delivered just a few feet away from Abdeslam and other defendants at the specially constructed dock – that were considered a historical lesson in the psychological impact of terrorist attacks. Zoe Alexander’s younger brother, Nick Alexander, was the only Briton killed in the Bataclan attack. At the age of 35, from Colchester, he was the Commodities Manager for the Eagles of Death Metal. Zoe approached Abdeslam directly at the trial. She told him that her brother was someone he did not hate, detailing his life and his love of music. He emphasized that Abdeslam also lost a brother brutally and violently that night: his older brother, Brahim Abdeslam, was a member of the same assault team and blew himself up at a bar in the final stages of the attack. She said Abdeslam’s family was undefeated, as was her family. Returning to Paris for the verdicts, Alexander said: “I addressed Salah Abdeslam directly because I felt we had had a similar experience, from two different angles. “I wanted to point out that we were all in this room together because of something that came from intolerance and hatred, and this democratic process that we went through was the other side of it.” She told Abdeslam about the trust her family had placed in the name of Nick, who donates music to small charities to show the defendants that “something beautiful was created by the horror they left behind”. Alexander added: “The humanity of the trial will probably be the overwhelming thing my family and I will remove. Πάνω Spending more than 10 months in the same room with people who have lost relatives or survived unthinkable things, with people who created these unimaginable things; the humanity of what you see is amazing. “ Graphic Tony Scott and Justine Merton-Scott went to the Bataclan concert as a birthday party. Flying from Leeds, they arrived late, so “fortunately” they headed to the balcony instead of their usual benches. When the shootings started and the attackers loaded again, they escaped from a staircase, through a skylight on the roof and from the one-bedroom window into an apartment. Three hours later, they were rescued by the fire brigade, “instead of being transported back to the scene of the massacre,” Justin said. Tony added: “But I still remember going down those stairs to the front of the building and there were corpses lying in front of me, on the floor, of people who had probably gone out to drink at the bar. That sticks to me. “ Justine noted that several of the defendants, at the end of the trial, had suggested that they had been “influenced” by the accounts of the survivors. He felt it was important and worth it. Their presence in court had also strengthened their “emotional bond” with the close community of survivors they call the “Paris family”. There was a small child sitting behind them at the concert – during the concert Justine had asked Tony to move so as not to obstruct the boy’s view of the band. But since then they have been wondering what had happened to the boy in the attack. His mother’s record in court was the first detail they had of his survival and recovery. Sébastien Lascoux was the 36-year-old director of a community radio station in Paris when he invited his friend Chris to a Bataclan concert. Lascoux survived the attack, eventually escaping from the benches over “a tangle of bodies, but not wanting to step on them or hurt them, so I apologized to them as I was leaving.” Chris was killed while trying to protect another friend from bullets. “Before I spoke at the trial, I was afraid that I would be overwhelmed by emotion, I was afraid to speak in front of the accused and to be moved in front of them,” Laskou said. “In the end, I cried while testifying, but it didn’t matter. “I wanted to be a voice for Chris who was no longer there to speak.” He said he was happy to add his voice to the accounts of that night. But after he testified, he lay down with “extreme fatigue” for 10 days. He no longer goes to concerts and quit his job at the radio, the journey to which he included, passing by Bataclan every day. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST “As survivors, we all have different backgrounds and we felt things very differently, but the kindness and sense of understanding between us was incredible,” Lascoux said. Georges Salines, whose daughter Lola, 28, was killed in Bataclan, was present at almost every day of the trial and testified about his loss. “What I felt from the beginning was the absurdity of these terrorist attacks where young people killed other young people,” he said. “I was asking myself for a long time why I did not feel hatred. I understood this when I heard the sister of another victim of the attack, Father Hamel, who was killed in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray. He said: “We were so sad that there was no room for hatred.” I found it very true. “
