"You want to play? You are going to die ”
.
January 8, 2015, around 8 a.m., avenue Pierre-Brossolette, Montrouge.
It's night.
It's cold.
Amedy Coulibaly has just killed the young municipal policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe, who was intervening in a traffic accident.
Another bullet fired by his Kalashnikov crossed the lower face of Eric, a road worker.
It is at this moment that Laurent, civil party in the trial, intervenes.
This colleague of Eric first believes that the stranger dressed all in black whose sleeve brushes his -
"I had the impression that someone was digging in my pocket"
- made a tasteless joke with a dummy weapon, the day after the Charlie bombing that everyone was talking about that morning.
But no, the lightning that shoots out of the cannon, a few centimeters from him, are not
"fireworks"
.
He sees Eric
"the exploded head, which pisses the blood"
.
Clarissa is lost.
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He tells the rest:
“Faced with Coulibaly, I have a rise of hatred.
I tell myself that if I want to survive, I have to get into him.
With my left hand, I grab the barrel of his weapon, with my right, the butt.
He is big: I find myself on my knees in front of him, arms in the air, clinging to his Kalashnikov
(he mimics the gesture).
That's when he said to me: “Do you want to play?
You are going to die ”.
He plunges a hand into his down jacket and pulls out an automatic pistol.
I grab the base of his sleeve to keep him from aiming at my head, the barrel going back and forth in front of my eyes
(it mimics a very quick side sweep).
I look him straight in the eye, I expect him to finish me ”
.
Laurent remembers this incredible moment:
“His eyes widened, a kind of joy in his eyes.
He gave me a big blow on the head, I had a cap, it dampened the shock.
I learned later that he wanted to shoot but the gun jammed.
He ran away.
I saw Clarissa inert and Eric who was still pissing blood ”.
Laurent drags his colleague, who will be saved, in a Midas store, along the avenue.
The assassin steals a car and disappears.
In his escape, he leaves a hood and his DNA.
Faced with Coulibaly, I have a surge of hatred.
I tell myself that if I want to survive, I have to get into him
Laurent
The intrepid city worker says,
“I will never look down in front of people like that.
I prefer to die fighting
”.
He unfolds his story with the banter of a Parisian titi and comes to the essential question.
What the devil could an Amedy Coulibaly do in Montrouge, January 8, 2015, while the day before, his friend Chérif Kouachi, supported by his brother Saïd, had decimated Charlie's editorial staff?
“I told the police that the only target in the neighborhood is a Jewish school.
A terrorist, he's not going to rob a bakery or a spare wheel!
I think he
(Coulibaly)
arrived too early, the school was not open yet.
If he remained static, he risked being noticed
(the confessional establishment is placed under close surveillance)
with his weapon.
He went around the block, to come back a little later ”.
Several elements of the file support the idea that Amedy Coulibaly was aiming to commit a massacre in the Yaguel Yaacov complex, like another Islamist criminal - Mohammed Merah, the "scooter killer", who sowed the seeds of violence. died in Toulouse, in 2012. The night before, a witness saw an African-type man prowling in front of the school, his cell phone in hand, as if he was carrying out a location.
On photos, the witness will identify Amedy Coulibaly.
The latter had parked a powerful motorcycle, helmet on the handlebars, in an adjacent street, to be able to escape without worrying about the traffic.
Does he give in to a form of panic when he comes across the municipal police officers on avenue Pierre-Brossolette?
Has he already given up on attacking the Jewish school, which is better protected than he hoped, and then decides to shoot the first uniforms he finds in his way?
Anyway, he targets Clarissa Jean-Philippe who has her throat pierced by ammunition.
Laurent:
“When I think that in the morning, when I left home, my partner told me to be careful, because of what had happened at Charlie Hebdo.
I had answered him, excuse the expression: "What gogol would go and carry out an attack in Montrouge"? "
"Opportunistic terrorism"
On the following November 13, a new wave of Islamist attacks rocked the Paris region.
Laurent, who had recovered as best he could from the episode of January 8,
“psychologically dark”
.
To make matters worse, he learns that the only survivor of the fanaticized commandos, Salah Abdeslam, hid in Montrouge, near his home, during his run, and that an explosives belt was discovered nearby.
“I thought Daesh had opened an office in my street,
” he quipped.
Very difficult months followed, marked in particular by a sentimental break-up after 25 years of living together.
Psychologists?
They are not of much help to him:
"They looked at me as if I had slipped on a banana peel"
, Laurent squeaks, eliciting laughter in the room.
"The January 2015 attacks are not opportunist terrorism
,
" he
insists, convinced that Amedy Coulibaly intended to carry out an anti-Semitic killing
"even if at the time, I was forbidden to think that.
What he did the next day provides further proof ”
.
I will never look down in front of people like that.
I prefer to die fighting
Laurent
The next day?
January 9, 2015. Amedy Coulibaly, armed with weapons and explosives, bursts into the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes.
He murders four people, for the sole reason that they were Jewish.
One of his victims died for having tried to seize the jihadist's Kalashnikov: the heroism of this hostage.
Heroism of Laurent in Montrouge.
Heroism of the gendarme who confronts and wounds Chérif Kouachi, in front of the printing press of Dammartin-en-Goële.
Heroism of the sequestered printer who does not abdicate.
"Unhappy the countries which need heroes,"
wrote Brecht.
Atrocious, these trials where there are more dead than heroes.
Resumption of debates Monday.