Trial of November 13: "Our children were murdered, they were confiscated from us"

On the screens of the specially composed Assize Court, at the trial of November 13, the faces of their loved ones are displayed one after the other.

Justine Dupont, 34, laughing blonde, seated in front of a glass.

Victor Munoz, 24 years old, with his fist raised and the happy face of the one who has just obtained his diploma.

Lamia Mondeguer, 30 years old, a mischievous smile seized on 11/13/2015 at 19:21 “at the defense of a friend” at the School of Arts-et-Métiers.

Anne-Laure Arruebo, 36, beautiful brunette with blue earrings that we guess matched her outfit.

It is these lives in full flight, mown by bullets among 21 others on the evening of November 13 on the terrace of the Belle-Equipe (Paris XI) that their relatives came to tell this Tuesday. But also “the shock wave undergone” by their families. “The years tinged with silence and tears,” said Marie-Aimée D.'s sister, 34, whom her friends just called “Marie”. And the thousands of questions.

At the helm comes Gregory T., Justine's companion. He stares at the accused's box with rage, stiff and tense, before turning away. Grégory put on a black T-shirt with the effigy of his beloved. It clings to the large-format image that overlooks the courtyard. He sighs: “Justine, it was my engine. She taught me to stay calm. I have a lot of anger, of hatred… Justine made me discover what family life was like, filled with love. Justine, I've never seen a woman like that! Justine, that was my everything and now I have nothing. »Grégory recounts their meeting at La Belle-Equipe, their group of friends, their parties, their installation in this apartment in Seine-Saint-Denis that he has never left and where he has only slept for six years on the couch. “It was our cocoon. This is what connects me to Justine.With two balconies and

doors in every room

, as she said.

"

Read also Trial of November 13: at the Belle Equipe, Juliette's first and last meeting with Cédric

In this cry of love echoes a guilt. Grégory apologizes to each of the young woman's relatives because that evening, he was not there, with his wife, "to try to protect her". "Justine would be dead right away, but I don't know," he said. I was not there to accompany him in his last breath, in his last heartbeat, and that is something that weighs heavily on me. That night, I lost nine people, six of whom were close. That evening was the only time in three years that I did not accompany Justine. To tell him that I loved him, that we had to have a child. He adds, wavering: "In the bathroom, there is a pregnancy test. The result, I have never looked at it. "

That evening, he continues, Grégory tried to join the Belle-Equipe, in vain.

He ran into the security lines.

It was after hours of waiting, on his return home, that an image on television seized him: “I saw Hyacinthe, I saw Thierry and I saw Justine.

I fell on the ground.

"He throws a long glance towards the sky then towards the box:" These people, supposedly men, soldiers, tore half of me from me.

"

“We all have our beliefs.

None is legitimate to kill ”

“We all have our beliefs. None is legitimate to kill ”, underlines starting Marie-Amélie, the big sister of Marie-Aimée, in her only allusion to the accused. Beside her stands Samy, her nephew, 13 years old at the time, 19 years old today, of whom she has become the guardian. “That evening, he lost his mother, his stepfather Thierry, his godmother Justine. His uncles, his tatas. Fortunately, three survived. Camille has become his godmother. We had to help Samy to build herself up with and also outside of this pain. She speaks of her father, "died of grief" two years after the attacks; of her mother, born on November 13, for whom "this date has become a nightmare"; of these “difficult” birthdays and endings; of his own discomfort in "going on the terrace" or "in a performance hall when I was not there".“Yet we have no hatred,” she assures us. We continue to help each other, to share and to love. Her sister and her loyal group of friends from whom so many fell this November 13, "We keep them in our hearts, warm. "

21 people were shot down on the terrace of the Belle Equipe, rue de Charonne (Paris XI).

LP / Olivier Arandel

" How do I feel ?

Like the daddy of a family that has been sentenced to life without a safety penalty.

In the words of Jean-Bernard Arruebo, before his own pain, arises his compassion for the survivors who have testified before.

“I would very much like to hug them;

tell them that they must not make them feel guilty: the culprits are there!

That they don't have to say they're lucky, I don't find them that lucky.

"

"These people without name, heart or reason"

He also explains that he feels neither hatred nor anger for the terrorists who killed his daughter. In his eyes, "these people without name, heart or reason" who have taken his darling daughter only deserve "pity". He also said the suffering of the absence: Anne-Laure, “rigorous” customs inspector who dealt with “diplomatic bags and spoke of the free movement of goods”. Anne-Laure and her “other life”, who loved “travel, Paris, concerts”, made jewelry and learned to sew “in a shop 150 m from La Belle-Equipe. Anne-Laure who adored rugby to the point of calling her cat "Brennus". “Anne-Laure is no longer there,” he said. Her clothes remain neatly stored in our wardrobes. His drawings remain. We waited until 2018 to start watching them. There remains a medal of a victim of terrorism,a promotion and Cécile

(Editor's note: the friend with whom her daughter was having a drink, survivor).

Our memories remain.

"He addresses the court:" It is up to you to do justice.

I, who am a Catholic, say: It is God who will render justice to souls.

"

"Our son was handsome, he was 24 years old"

In the successive accounts of the parents of Victor Munoz, Dominique and José, there is this image forever engraved: that of their son whom they had sought so much lying behind a bay window in a room of the Medico-Legal Institute of Paris. . "You have 5 minutes to realize that your son is dead and that you will never be able to hug and kiss him again", Dominique book. “After 48 hours, there is this terrible vision behind a window, of a beautiful boy smiling at life, about to get married. Our son was dead, executed like an animal. His hair was still stuck with the blood from the bullet that crossed the back of his neck. Our son was handsome, he was 24 years old, ”cries José.

He, the son of a craftsman from Cordoba, Spain, grew up near Orleans "in a popular immigrant district", nourished by humanist values ​​and with a brilliant career, says how much he tries "every day to understand the unspeakable. ".

She, elected from the 11th century, a teacher who stopped teaching, evokes this life that has become "without desire or plans", as "suspended and we are suspended from life".

“We had to stay up for our eldest son.

"

To read alsoProcess of November 13: "If you are ready to dialogue and to regret, then me, I am ready to forgive"

Dignity, humanity, the will to understand why, this is also what overwhelms in the long testimony of Nadia Mondeguer, Lamia's mother. She also takes the court, at length, in the last steps of this young "solar" woman, artistic agent and animator for the city of Paris. "A girl from the 11th century", she said, who was dining that evening with her lover at the Belle-Equipe (Romain Didier, also killed), "150 m from the house". She recounts these

“Ta Ta Ta”

that she heard without knowing that her daughter was being “shot”. She describes the shock of the news which "falls", "the descent into hell" according to; the violence of the MLI and of this body that is presented to it and which is that of another victim. “Our children were murdered and our children confiscated from us. "

Lamia's death, she recalled, ended up taking her husband Jean-François, this solid Breton - "granite" - who had married her, she "the Mediterranean" came from Egypt. “He went to join his little ladybug. Sadness devoured him from within. He was a founding member of the 13Onze15 association. He got involved a lot for the duty of remembrance. »She speaks modestly about her own pain, these" traces "of her daughter that she seeks and finds in Paris. "I don't want to leave Paris, it's as if I was abandoning it".

Of her murdered daughter and her murderers, she also says how “in relation to this violent act, you feel very small.

»She recalls that Lamia and her brothers" were born without violence "at the clinic in Lilas.

“My daughter on July 21, 1985. To leave this world in the most violent form I could have ever imagined.

She points out that some of those who killed her "were born in 1985, like Lamia".

“I could have been their mother.

"

"These are our children, they went to our schools"

When she found out, she recounts, her first reaction was: “What a waste!

Her father and I went on all the school trips.

I imagined them in my hands.

Little pieces of cabbage ... And the more you advance in the knowledge of the file, the more these angels turn into monsters.

"Nadia Mondeguer continues:" But to seek an explanation in religion, I refuse.

For me, they are driven by an impulse of violence on which a religious veneer has been put.

"She points to the box and insists:" These are our children, they went to our schools.

"

Nadia Mondeguer tells two more memories.

The first, when she managed to return to Egypt, to Cairo, to the park where she had gone to listen to the voice of the muezzins launching the call to prayer with Lamia.

“We were listening to the

Allahu Akbar

(God is great) of the living, not the dead man, not that cry which accompanies murderous gestures.

A policeman to whom she confides her story in Arabic tells her that the 130 (victims) are chadid (martyrs).

“For me, the circle was complete.

I am reclaiming this word which has been confiscated.

To evoke the second memory, she turns to Salah Abdeslam.

We are in 1981, she is 29 years old, she chose France but she considers that "the bloodthirsty guillotine" taints the country she has joined.

On televisions appears the image "of the candidate François Mitterrand", then elected President of the Republic: "We said:

Phew, Phew, the death penalty is abolished.

 She still thinks it: "That is the greatest progress."

"She addresses the defense lawyers and enjoins:" I tell you: do your job.