“The sound, I still hear it, there, today”: at the November 13 trial, the victims of the Stade de France – archyde

The trial of the November 13 attacks entered a tunnel on Tuesday, September 28, from which it will not emerge, at the earliest, until the end of October. By then, in five weeks, the special assize court of Paris will have reviewed the fatal evening 350 times from 350 different angles: 350 civil parties – traumatized, injured, close to deceased victims – out of the approximately 2,200 constituted, will parade at the bar to tell what they experienced at the Stade de France, on the terraces of the 10^e and 11^e arrondissements, or at the Bataclan.

After the wide shots of the investigative work and the panoramic view of each crime scene, the audience goes into a close-up, and will focus isolated cameras on the intimacies that November 13th came to strike. Enough to constitute a gigantic mosaic of faces, memories and traumas linked to the attacks.

The criminal trial now gives a large place to the victims, and the president of the court himself seems to fear the effect of such an accumulation since in the preamble, Jean-Louis Périès made this request, well aware that it does not would have nothing obvious: “I would like us to avoid, as much as possible, repetitions at the bar. “ More than 200 people will come to tell their evening at the Bataclan and its consequences. We will not escape some redundancies.

“The world has collapsed”

Just Tuesday, the first two detonations of the Stade de France sounded thirteen times, over the stories of thirteen first civil parties. It was neither “A big firecracker”, nor “A gas leak in the sidewalk”, or “The beer pumps of the refreshment bar which had exploded”, as some initially believed, but suicide bombers, the first of which killed Manuel Dias, 68, the only victim who died in Saint-Denis while the France-Germany match was being played.

Sophie Dias, 39, the daughter of this coach driver who had driven spectators from her town of Reims, came to the bar to pay tribute to a caring father and loving husband, whose widow, meanwhile, was crying. all she could in the back of the room. On November 13, 2015, Manuel Dias’ daughter was in Portugal to prepare for her wedding. After a sleepless night and dozens of unanswered phone calls, she received a call from the police telling her that her father was not on the casualty list, then another from the Portuguese consulate telling her that it was. “The world has collapsed. “ The wedding took place anyway.

Sophie Dias succeeded the survivors, those who had the chance to extricate themselves from the chaos after having had the misfortune of being plunged into it. From their stories emerges the dizzying impression of a life that turns on a roll of the dice. And if Bilal Bley Mokono had not made a point of taking ” a merguez to the good franquette ” with his 13-year-old son before the game? What if the stand where the first explosion took place, which had stopped grilling, hadn’t turned on its hotplate again just for them? What if Marylin B., who had just completed a report on German supporters, had not been sent by the director to make some final shots on the side of the Events, the restaurant affected?

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