Known for his role as a tortured and reckless cop in the “Braquo” series on Canal + between 2009 and 2016, Jean-Hugues Anglade was also confronted with the violence of Islamist terrorism in real life.
A passenger on the Thalys Amsterdam-Paris on August 21, 2015, he was installed with his family in a car next to the one where the assailant appeared before being neutralized.
This Monday morning, the French actor, 65, was heard by the Special Assize Court of Paris responsible for trying the author of this abortive attack and three other suspects.
On this Friday afternoon in August, Anglade returned from a tourist trip of a few days in Amsterdam, with his ex-partner and his two sons, then aged 13 and 14.
Sitting on the window side of car 11, the lead car, facing the opposite direction, the actor wears a helmet on his head and listens to music when the attack by Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani occurs.
At the helm, the actor first tells of his incomprehension when a Thalys controller appears followed by two hostesses.
"I saw them run to cross our car towards the powerplant, rush over and get into the van that could lock from the inside," he said in a voice marked by a few quavering inflections.
My first thought was to tell myself that it would still have been very inappropriate for people to allow themselves to play the game of cat and mouse during their working hours.
So I understood that something serious was happening… ”
"We think we're going to die under the bullets"
Dressed in a black overcoat, his face masked and topped by a pair of glasses, the actor punctuates some of his sentences with a nervous little laugh.
The doubt dissipates a few moments later.
“A rather elderly lady arrives and shouts in English:
Someone is shooting people (Editor's note: someone shoots people),
continues Jean-Hugues Anglade.
We then tried to take shelter in the van as the Thalys employees had just done.
We knocked on the door explaining that we were not terrorists.
We especially wanted to keep the children safe.
But we got no response.
We found ourselves alone, abandoned, left to fend for ourselves in a mousetrap with one or more people on the train who wanted to kill us.
We then think we are going to die under Kalashnikov bullets which is not very common and what I had never imagined.
Personally, I would prefer to die on stage… ”
Faithful to his statements to Paris Match and RTL in the days following the attack, Anglade once again denounces the behavior of Thalys employees.
“I was very shocked by this desire not to let anyone in
(Editor's note: in the lead van)
, he supports.
This is why I wanted to mark the occasion by bringing me civil action ”.
Failing to be able to put his relatives and himself in a safe place, Jean-Hugues Anglade remains confined for long minutes in a reduced space in the company of other companions in misfortune.
“There was a moving and overwhelming silence and dignity,” he recalls.
For my part, I tried to influence the events a little by triggering an alarm.
I tapped with all my strength on the glass so that I could press the red button.
"The actor of the" Big Bath "injured his hand," three times nothing, "he says.
A probable testimony by videoconference
The train then travels at reduced speed, around 80 km / h.
In the meantime, Anthony Sadler, one of the three Americans behind the neutralization of the terrorist, came to them, looking for a survival blanket.
He had time to warn them that an assailant had been taken out of action.
Jean-Hugues Anglade shyly steps forward and sees a man undergoing a strangulation key.
This is Ayoub El-Khazzani.
The same who listens to Jean-Hugues Anglade this Monday morning in the box of the accused.
The train finally stopped at Arras station, Anglade is taken to the hospital, accompanied by one of his sons.
There, he meets Spencer Stone, whom the actor mistakenly renames Oliver Stone
(Editor's note: an American director)
on three occasions, before being corrected by the President of the Court.
“I was able to take a photo with him at the hospital,” Anglade continues, amused by this confusion.
This photo, I had it framed and when we wonder at home if it's okay or if it's not okay, I look at this photo and I say to my sons:
On the contrary, everything is fine
.
This man probably saved our lives.
We sometimes write to him to thank him.
"
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The same Spencer Stone, 28, will not come to testify physically before the Assize Court, neither today nor in the coming days. After being uncomfortable on Wednesday after taking drugs and alcohol on board the plane that transported him to Paris, the young man was hospitalized in serious condition. At the start of the hearing this Monday morning, his lawyer, Me Thibault de Montbrial, confirmed that Spencer Stone had now left France but that he remained "determined to testify before the Court". The idea of a testimony by videoconference, "within ten days", was proposed by his lawyer.