Trial of November 13: the edge newspaper of an ex-hostage of the Bataclan, week 4
On November 13, 2015, David Fritz-Goeppinger was at Bataclan when the concert hall was attacked by three men, armed with assault rifles and explosive belts."Never again in my life I will forget these faces," says David.Taken hostage for two and a half hours, he thinks every minute that his time has come.Until the BRI police officers.That night, the coordinated attacks on the Stade de France, terraces of the 10th and 11th arrondissement of Paris and the Bataclan, left 130 dead, including 90 in the concert hall, and more than 400 injured.Almost six years later, the trial of these attacks is held in Paris.David Fritz-Goeppinger, today a photographer, agreed to share via this logbook his feeling, in pictures and in writing, during the long months that the historic trial of these November 13 attacks that marked will last.France.Here is his story of the fourth week.
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"We were five friends that evening ..."
Wednesday September 29.I take my time to go to the palate.In my mind, the echo of yesterday's testimonies still resonates.I meet a woman climbing the steps on rue du Harlay and I decide to take her picture.By passing the doors of the palace, I think of the victims who tried, as best they can, to describe the evil that eats out their existence.Today, other voices mingle with those of yesterday.Victims of the Stade de France and the chime will express themselves in front of the courtyard.I settle in the same place as yesterday, so as to see each person present in the room.After a few weeks I start to notice new details, such as the particular smell of the courtroom: a chemical odor made up of a mixture of wood and carpet.I notice the sound of the doors of the courtroom that open and close more than usual, which attracts my attention.By taking a look, I notice the back and forth of the civil parties accompanied by lawyers and their black dresses flying behind them.
By hearing the first civil parties to deposit, I understand how violent, sad and sort of incredible our stories are.Which sends me back to my own deposition which takes place in less than twenty days.Despite the six years spent trying to find the words, I can't clear the smoke screen that covers them.What are the fairest words to tell my memories?I think back to the judicial police officer (OPJ) who collected my complaint, to his sweet gaze, to his words: "There will be a trial one day ...".Leaving the courtroom during an interruption, a journalist friend tells me that some civil parties are literally standing at the helm.The image strikes me, we are the captains of a ship that we do not control.
The civil parties are linked.Each testimony completes my vision of the event that were the attacks of the Stade de France and the Carillon on November 13, 2015.I find a common denominator in the depositions of most of the victims: friendship.That evening, some spend a moment with family, others in love and others with friends.Hear the banality of these situations, so beautiful, brings us back to everyday and what we were outside that evening.We just wanted to enjoy a Friday evening of November and then go home, find the monotony of a normal life, without fear or post-traumatic stress.The mention of this daily life by the civil parties creates a terrible contrast with the following terror.Terrorism is this contrast, distorting everyone's life and leaving behind only the rubble of what we were.
I scratch my brown notebook while looking at the retransmission screens but I have to leave the palate.Like yesterday, the ills of the civil parties that deposit follow me far beyond the island of the city, I come back tomorrow.
It was life
Thursday September 30.A young man my age recounts his evening of November 13 in Little Cambodia when I push the doors of the courtroom.While Aristide immerses us in the intimacy of its physical and psychological reconstruction, I sit near a friend, Eva.His words resonate hard in the room despite the delicacy with which he addresses the courtyard.His strength and the choice of words he uses gives the impression that he fought as the crocodile present on his polo shirt.After him, a new man advances at the helm.By presenting himself he indicates to the court: "I am a photographer".Yann poses important words on what the little Cambodia was before the arrival of the terrorists.He describes the smoking dishes still present on the tables, says that a man settles near his loved ones and he waiting for his take -out dish coming.He says life.The courtroom is bathed in his story while Yann takes us with him.Before, during, after.
I have to leave the main courtroom for the outside.I find Arthur Dénouveaux for a few portraits of him.Despite the place that the trial takes in my daily life, I try somehow to continue working "normally" by accepting some photographic orders.During the short photo session, we exchange a few words on our common feelings concerning this new part of the trial.Finished photos, we return to the palace enclosure.For the first time, I decide to start writing this seated post in front of the courtroom doors.I observe, in front of me, the ballet of the gendarmes, journalists and lawyers who enter and leave the room according to the depositions.The chattering of some make the sound level of the lost footing room, breaking the religious silence that reigns there.Sometimes I stop on insignificant details, such as the screeching of gendarmes boots on the ground or a smell of floating perfume in the air.The gestures at the exit of the room are often the same: search for the phone, stop and resumption of the march after consulting the latest notifications.Bruno Poncet, also a victim, advances to me and we start a discussion on the depositions to which we have attended.He tells me that his body begins to react to the audience days, he has back pain,.This is not my case but it is not the only one to explain to me that psychosomatic symptoms are back.I come back to my comparison on the trees.I remember hearing that they were marked on the layers of their trunks each difficult period of their existence, growing up "over", is that the resilience that everyone is talking about?
A crowd arises from the room, it is an interruption of the session.This moment always creates a kind of general cacophony and the lost steps become the space of a few minutes..In the midst of this difficult moment that is the trial of the attacks of November 13, I still find the fraternity that characterizes a good part of the victims.On my right is the office of the Paris Court of Appeal and its members who wear a pink color chasuble.From the corner of my eye I see Gaële Joly heading to me, it was with her that I designed the log project for franceinfo.
The ringing of the courtroom sounds, I mentally imagine the president say: "The hearing is resumed!"Extracting from the room is difficult, as we hear is striking and completes the painting of the construction of our evening of November 13.I think back to the words of my friend Guillaume who tells me when we leave the Bataclan that we are not the only victims.In the large wooden box which serves as a court, the memory of the victims is expressed.Behind these testimonies are hidden from the accomplices and anecdotes of a normal evening when the emergence of terrorism made disappear the carelessness of our lives.I leave the palace around 6 p.m., summer loses slowly from the fresh wind from fall, tomorrow we are already in October.
November 13
Friday October 1.Yesterday I wrote the start of fall, today I feel like the weather read my previous post.In front of the large door of the palace, the trees are starting to lose their Roussie leaves by the last sunny days in September.I arrive late, and for a short time.
By crossing security positions, I think of families, children, friends, acquaintances.How many November 13 are there?How many people have suffered from the attacks?All the civil parties that I heard this week bear witness to a slice of their memory, their evening, their trauma.
This afternoon, the depositions of the victims of the attack against the beautiful team continue.At the microphone invites the lexical field of the daily life of many Parisians: glass with friends, evening, neighborhoods, friends, friends ... until the emergence of terror turns the story.A deposition calls me more than the others, it is the daughter of a deceased victim.Mélissa was fourteen on November 13.The strength and wisdom of the words she uses to talk about the absence of her mother, her pain and her trauma force respect and upset me.We have five weeks of testimonies to us, five weeks when a large part of these memories will resonate in the courtroom.I notice that faced with this surge of stories, the memorial holes I had concerning the attacks begin to fill.But how can we keep the distance sufficient to write and tell what I see while preserving my own psychological integrity?I have trouble this week.The stories that I hear refer to my own difficult times, in the reconstruction and during the attack.But the desire to testify and tell you what I see has become my own means of protection, my safe house.
Leaving the palace, it still rains, the low sky bathes the capital in a pale light in accordance with my mood.Time passes too quickly on the island of the city.
17th day
Monday October 4.After ordering my coffee in a brewery on rue Dauphine, I walk towards the palate and puts on my neck the “civil part” badge which gives me access to the sanctuarized areas of the Cité de la Cité.I arrive on time.Today is a different day from the previous ones, because the Court of the Civil Parts of the legal and physical persons affected by the attacks of November 13 are studied by the court..Normally, there is no audience on Mondays but the president decided to mobilize this day exceptionally to study and expose the refusals.When I arrive, I chat with friends also victims and discover that I am not the only one to have spent a difficult weekend.We are a lot not to be able to get out of the V13 trial.The progress of the debates itself seems to follow us to our home, like glue to our shoes, we find our apartments marked by the depositions and testimonies to which we have assisted.
Sitting for my favorite place, at the back of the room, I observe the start of the debates concerning legal persons.To tell the truth, I find it difficult to understand what takes place before me as the technical terms of the lawyers who follow one another in front of the courtyard are complicated.Simple questions come to my mind as the argument advances: "What if the president accepted the constitutions, what would it change?"Response to which I will have no response apart from a few speculation.For each constitution refused, the public prosecutor explains the situation then the lawyer for the civil party comes to the bar to plead.We are witnessing a sort of verbal game, with a lot of mentions to other judicial cases, terrorists or not.It is with force arguments that lawyers plead, as in films, I say to myself.Their voice resonates forcefully in the pregnant of the courtroom, electrifying the atmosphere.Their arguments seem relentless, leave no room for doubt.
The president looks each of the actors in front of him, asking questions with patience.But to tell the truth, it is to a friend that I turn my mind today.I come across him when I arrived in lost steps, he wears a black polo shirt and his glasses around his neck.When I join him, I distinguish a smile under his mask.Jean-Luc lives above the beautiful team.From his living room, he assists, helpless, with the attack against the restaurant below.It is one of the first people who assistance to the victims of the attack that has just been invited in its neighborhood.Jean-Luc is one of those people who tried to reverse the time to stop the advance of death.Today, it is his lawyer who must plead for him, to defend his damage, his trauma and his November 13.
I leave the palace around 7 p.m. and start writing this post on my dining table while listening to the rest of the debates on the Très Webradio.It is 8:40 p.m. and the debates continue on the island of the city.I hear the voice of the president to resonate in my kitchen, his patience seems to have left him.It's time to disconnect for today.
Frozen water
Tuesday October 5.I have the impression that the boss of the brasserie where I take my daily coffee is starting to be used to seeing me since he now gives me a smile as soon as he sees me in front of his establishment.I no longer expect to be on the bridge-neuf to put on the red cord of the civil parts around my neck, I do it, coffee in hand a few meters before.
Today the depositions of the civil parties resume where they stopped on Friday evening.When I cross the doors of the courtroom, she is a young woman standing in front of the courtyard, she was in the vehicle that one of the terrorists targeted in front of the beautiful team.Today's testimonies are difficult to hear.Behind me, I hear a newborn baby laughing from time to time, breaking the almost religious silence of the courtroom.I have the impression that the atmosphere of the courtroom is slowly sliding towards the expression of the absolute memory of the evening of November 13.All explain how the banality of a Friday can turn into an infinite abyss of sadness and anger.Over the depositions I observe the lawyers, the courtyard, and the civil parties immerse themselves one after the other in the stories as if they put their heads in a sink full of frozen water.Time seems to stop each time a loved one comes to tell the absence and the loss of a loved one.
I need to go out to get the air and walk for a few minutes to join the few steps that are still lost in the anteroom of justice.I meet Vincent and her husband, François, accompanied by their family.I know Vincent of the Life for Paris association, and it is the only victim of Comptoir Voltaire with whom I was able to discuss.That evening, they drank a glass at the counter, as a romantic, when a terrorist explodes and plunges them into total amazement, turning their lives in this common place where none wanted to be, that of the victims of terrorism.I photograph them both in the corridors of the palace, Vincent has his eyes drawn but François tempers, a slight smile at the corner of the lips.
I resume my place in the courtroom.The president calls for a new civil party, it is the mother of the newborn who is behind me.She advances at the helm accompanied by her sister.Sarah tells us how her daily life turned after 13, how she tried to rebuild itself despite the fight against her post-traumatic stress.His tears arise without warning, behind me, her baby cries in echo.I write what I see in my notebook, raising my eyes I see my lawyer leaving the weeping courtroom.During the interruption of the session, I chat with her.She tells me that she preferred to leave the room rather than cry under her mask.What was a feeling a few days earlier is a fact: the more the days pass the more we immerse ourselves in the rubble of our memories of 13.
Today is the day the world family is dropping off.Yohann, Nadia then Gwendal.Time passes and I hear the president to invite nadia and yohann at the bar.This is the first time that I have regretted being at the back of the room.When Nadia speaks, she stands straight and facing the president.His verb is firm and relentless.Like a rock caught the assaults of an unleashed sea, it will not vacillate, even addressing the accused.Nadia tells her daughter, her mourning, her love for the one that Jean-François called "his ladybug".His words hit me, his rough sensitivity even more.She says that a few years later, during a stay in Egypt, she goes, alone, in a Cairo park where she has already been accompanied by her daughter.The call to prayer resonates in the city.For her, Allah Akbar that she hears means life.Far from the deadly concept of those who glorify death, she said, looking at the box.Shortly after, Gwendal chose to project a photograph taken from a newspaper where his father is accompanied by the best friend of Lamia.Both leave the Medico-Legal Institute.Gwendal slowly describes the scene we see, I recognize Jean-François, my eyes are filled with tears.
It is 7 p.m. and I decide to leave the courtroom after Gwendal finished.I sit in the room of lost steps and start writing this post while the president calls the first civil parties of the Comptoir Voltaire at the helm.
Tomorrow I will write again.
