Emotions raw before trial starts over Paris carnage
PARIS — For the music lover, it was nearly three hours at gunpoint, wondering if he would become yet another body on the floor of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.
For the grieving mother, the night of carnage robbed her of her son and tarnished her view of the vibrant neighborhood they both loved.
For the French president, a celebration of the national soccer team transformed into sleepless days of facing down a shocking extremist attack.
The survivors of the Islamic State attack on Paris the night of Nov. 13, 2015, and those who mourn the 130 dead, are bracing for the long-awaited trial and hoping for justice.
It begins Wednesday in a secure modern complex embedded in Paris’ original 13thcentury courthouse. The main chamber and 12 overflow rooms can accommodate 1,800 victims, 330 lawyers and 141 accredited journalists for the nine-month trial.
Twenty men are going on trial, six of them in absentia. All but one of the absent men are presumed dead in Syria or Iraq. Most are accused of helping create false identities, transporting the attackers back to Europe from Syria, providing them with money and phones, and supplying explosives and weapons.
The attacks sent France into a state of emergency. For Stephane Toutlouyan and the others held hostage inside the Bataclan, the transformation was intensely personal.
“The reaction to this, afterwards, was to try and take back control of our lives and do the things that maybe we’d not done before, because we had no time to lose,” he said.
On that fateful Nov. 13, a cell of nine Islamic State supporters armed with automatic rifles and explosive vests struck across the French capital. Nearly all were from France or Belgium, as were the cell’s 10th member and sole survivor, Salah Abdeslam.
Abdeslam, who ditched his car and malfunctioning explosives vest, is the only defendant facing murder charges in the trial.
Another key defendant, Mohammed Abrini, reappeared months later in footage of the Islamic State attack on the Brussels airport and subway.
Many of the dead attackers, along with Abdesalam and Abrini, were childhood friends from the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. Some joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, including the Paris attack ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
Driving three rental cars, they took their “convoy of death” to the highway linking Brussels and Paris on Nov. 12, 2015, and scattered in reserved hotel rooms.