France’s biggest trial to begin Wednesday

PARIS: The biggest trial in France’s modern legal history begins on Wednesday over the November 2015 attacks on Paris that saw 130 people slaughtered at bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall.

The bombing and gun assault by three teams of jihadists, claimed by the Islamic State, was France’s worst post-war atrocity.

A purpose-built facility at the historic court of justice on the Ile de la Cite in Paris will host the trial, with 14 of the 20 defendants present, including the only surviving attacker, Salah Abdeslam.

“Everyone has their own expectations, but we know that this is an important milestone for our future lives,” said Arthur Denouveaux, a survivor of the Bataclan music venue attack and president of the Life for Paris victims’ association.

The trial over the traumatic jihadist killings, which were planned from Syria, is on a scale unmatched in recent times. It will last nine months until late May 2022, with 145 days for hearings involving about 330 lawyers, 300 victims and former president Francois Hollande who will testify in November.

The case file runs to a million pages in 542 volumes.

Surviving gunman Abdeslam, a Belgium-born French-moroccan, fled the scene of the carnage after abandoning his suicide belt, which investigators found to be defective. Abdeslam, now 31, was later captured in Brussels after four months on the run.

He has resolutely refused to cooperate with the French investigation and remained largely silent throughout a separate trial in Belgium in 2018 that saw him declare only that he put his “trust in Allah” and that the court was biased. He is scheduled testify in mid-january 2022.

Fourteen of the accused – who face a range of charges from providing logistical support, to planning and weapons offences – are expected to be present in court. Six are being tried in absentia. Five of them are presumed dead.

The alleged coordinator, Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed by French police five days after the attacks.

The horror was unleashed late on November 13 when jihadists set off suicide belts outside the Stade de France stadium where President Hollande was in the crowd watching France play Germany. A group of gunmen then indiscriminately opened fire from a car on half a dozen restaurants in the trendy 10th and 11th districts of Paris. The massacre culminated at the Bataclan music venue where a packed concert was underway. Three jihadists stormed in and a total of 90 people lost their lives there.