- Paris in November 2015 will start on Wednesday.
- 130 people were killed in the attack.
- The trial time is 145 days.
The largest trial in modern French legal history began in the Paris attack in November 2015, which killed 130 people in bars, restaurants and Bataclan Concert Hall.
The suicide bombings and gun attacks planned by the three jihadists in Syria and subsequently claimed by the Islamic State group were the worst post-war atrocities in France.
The only surviving assailant, Salah Abdeslam, will join 13 other defendants on the pier at the dedicated facility of the historic courthouse on Ile de la Cite in central Paris.
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The other six are being tried in absentia. Twelve of the 20 people on trial, including Abdeslam, will face life imprisonment if convicted.
“We are entering uncharted territory,” said Arthur Denouveaux, a survivor of the Batakland music venue attack and president of the Victims’ Association Paris Life.
“We can’t wait for it to start, but we have to ask: what will happen in the next nine months?”
Million pages
The trial will last until May 2022, and the 145-day hearing will involve approximately 330 lawyers, 300 victims and former President François Hollande, who will testify in November.
The case file has a total of 542 volumes, 1 million pages, and 53 million wide.
This week, Attorney General Eric Dupond-Moretti described the trial as “historic” and “one of the highest levels” when he visited the court.
The surviving gunman Abdeslam, who is 31 years old, was born in Belgium but has French and Moroccan nationality. He fled the scene of the massacre after giving up his suicide belt. Investigators later discovered that the belt was defective.
Four months later, he was arrested in Brussels and hid in a building near his home.
Abdeslam firmly refused to cooperate with the French investigation and remained largely silent during another separate trial in Belgium in 2018, where he only declared that he “believes in Allah” and that the court was biased.
A major question is whether he will speak in the testimony originally scheduled for mid-January.
Another focus of the trial will be how the murderer managed to enter France undetected, allegedly using the flow of migrants from areas controlled by the Islamic State of Syria as a cover.
The 14 defendants — who face charges ranging from providing logistical support to planning attacks and weapon crimes — are expected to appear in court.
Among them was Osama Krayem, a Swedish national who was identified by Belgian investigators as one of the murderers of a Jordanian pilot who was burned to death in a cage by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria in early 2015. He is also under investigation for war crimes in Sweden.
Presumptive death
The coordinator and Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud was allegedly shot dead by French police in northeastern Paris five days after the attack.
Of the six people tried in absentia, five were presumed dead, mainly in the Syrian air strike.
The terrorist incident occurred late on Friday night, November 13, when the jihadists detonated a suicide belt outside the French Stadium, and Hollande was watching the football match between France and Germany in the crowd. A person was killed there.
A group of Islamic gunmen, including Abdeslam’s brother Brahim, later opened fire from a car on six restaurants in the fashionable 10th and 11th districts of the capital, which were crowded with people on warm autumn nights.
The massacre culminated in Batakland Concert Hall. Three jihadists rushed in during a performance, resulting in 90 deaths.
Although the initial phase of the trial will focus on procedural issues, it is expected that starting on September 28, approximately 300 survivors and relatives of victims will begin to testify in five weeks of tragic statements.
The security forces will be on high alert.
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