It was the biggest criminal trial ever happened in France, where the number of people who survived the deadliest peacetime attack on French soil. It gave shocking details of their ordeal, from crawling past corpses at Paris’s Bataclan concert hall to being held hostage by shooters or ducking Kalashnikov fire at restaurant pavement tables. The article is about Paris Attacks Trial Concluded After 10 Months of Harrowing Testimony.
The ten months of harrowing testimony from the victims and the bereaved became more than just a legal process. The trial allowed survivors to speak out, a crucial step in France experiencing its trauma over the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, which left the lives of 130 people and wounded more than 490.
Islamic State claimed during the attacks that suicide bombers first struck outside the national sports stadium, then in drive-by shootings and suicide bombings by targeting cafeterias and restaurants where people were out. In the end, a gun attack at the Bataclan during a rock concert by Eagles of Death Metal killed 90 people.
One public prosecutor at the trial said France had come closer to “piecing together the puzzle” of the attacks. Almost all of the 10-men unit struck the city died that black night, either killing themselves or being shot dead by police. The only survivor was Salah Abdeslam, a Brussels-born French citizen, whose suicide vest was found dumped in a bin, with investigators saying it was “defective” but him saying he backed out at the last minute and fled. Abdeslam was the main focus of 20 suspects accused of providing planning and logistical support.
Yet the trial’s searing accounts of personal pain and resilience from survivors and the bereaved that were delivered only meters away from Abdeslam and other defendants in the specially built dock were seen as a historical lesson in the psychological impact of terrorist attacks.
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