France honours terror attack victims
• A subdued France paid homage Friday to those killed two weeks ago in the attacks that gripped Paris in fear and mourning, honouring each of the 130 dead by name as the president pledged to “destroy the army of fanatics” who claimed so many young lives.
With each name and age read aloud inside the Les Invalides national monument, the toll gained new force. Most, as French President François Hollande noted, were under 35, killed while enjoying a mild Friday night of music, food, drinks or sports. The youngest was 17, the oldest, 68.
Throughout Paris, French flags fluttered in windows and on buses in uncharacteristic displays of patriotism in response to the city’s second deadly terror attack this year. But the mood was grim, and the locked-down ceremony at Les Invalides lacked the defiance of January, when a million people poured through the streets to honour those killed in Islamic terrorist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine office and a Jewish supermarket.
Hollande, who in January locked arms with world leaders in a show of global unity against terrorism, sat alone in a hard-backed chair in the cavernous Invalides courtyard, the assembled mourners behind him as victims’ names were recited. France’s military provided the only images of Friday’s ceremony, and no one without an invitation was admitted.
The courtyard went silent after the reading of the names, broken finally by a mournful cello. Hollande stared straight ahead, before rising to speak.
“To all of you, I solemnly promise that France will do everything to destroy the army of fanatics who committed these crimes,” he said.
The speech was dedicated above all to the dead and France’s young.
“The ordeal has scarred us all, but it will make us stronger. I have confidence in the generation to come. Generations before have also had their identity forged in the flower of youth. The attack of Nov. 13 will remain in the memory of today’s youth as a terrible initiation in the hardness of the world. But also as an invitation to combat it by creating a new commitment,” he said.
Hollande noted many of the dead, especially those at the Eagles of Death Metal show at the Bataclan concert hall, had careers in music — a music he said the attackers found intolerable.
The ordeal has scarred us all, but it will make us stronger
“It was this harmony that they wanted to break, shatter. It was this joy that they wanted to bury with the blast of their bombs. Well, they will not stop it. We will multiply the songs, the concerts, the shows. We will keep going to the stadiums, and especially our beloved national stadium in Saint-Denis. We will participate in sports gatherings great and small. And we will commune in the best of emotions, without being troubled by our differences, our origins, our colours, our convictions, our beliefs, our religions. Because we are a single and unified nation, with the same values.”
Hollande’s voice and the music — including the French classic with the line “When we have only love to speak to the cannons” — were the only sounds inside the Invalides, filled by hundreds of people.
Two named fugitives are wanted for the Nov. 13 attacks — Salah Abdeslam, whose brother was among the suicide bombers and who is believed to have fled for Belgium and Mohamed Abrini, whose role has never been made clear. Seven attackers died on Nov. 13. Five days later, the Belgian suspected of planning the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a female cousin and another unidentified man were killed in a police raid. The Paris prosecutor said Abaaoud had been planning another suicide attack.