Trial of attacks: "We must broadcast the images, otherwise it becomes abstract", defends Riss

More than seven years after the attacks on the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher store, the appeal trial of two alleged supporters of the perpetrators of the jihadist attacks opened in Paris on Monday.

“For all the witnesses and members of the newspaper who lived through these events, it remains difficult to get back to telling all this again, even if it is essential for the court”, commented this Friday the director of the satirical weekly. , Riss.

Asked about Franceinfo, the cartoonist and survivor of the January 2015 attacks also returned to the trial of the Nice attack which is currently being held before the Special Court of Assizes in Paris.

“When we listen to the other victims, we understand what they have experienced because they are very similar traumas”, judges the designer for whom the projection of the videos remains necessary.

“We cannot sanitize trials for attacks”

Images from CCTV cameras showing the mad dash of the ram truck driven by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on July 14, 2016 were shown at trial on Thursday in a larger than usual courtroom.

Exceptional security measures were taken during the viewing.

“You shouldn't see these images as something that you suffer.

It is something that we communicate so that people realize.

(…).

Of course they have to be disseminated, otherwise it becomes abstract.

You cannot sanitize trials for attacks by not showing anything, ”he judges.

Read alsoThe trial of the Nice attack in the face of images of terror: "There are no words to describe that"

In passing, the designer returned to the ever-present risk of terrorist attacks in France.

“I think Charlie Hebdo is a newspaper that can still potentially excite people.

Our past experience leads us to be suspicious.

Overconfidence can be tragic, as seen in the case of Salman Rushdie,” he said.

As a reminder, the author of "Satanic Verses", a work which had earned him a fatwa in 1989, had been stabbed in the neck and abdomen during a conference he gave last August in the State of New York.

"After years, we tend to want to believe that things are improving, but unfortunately, I don't think we can think that," said the cartoonist, saying that "Islamist ideology manifests itself differently today ".