The court declared admissible on Tuesday a large number of natural and legal persons who had become civil parties to the trial of the November 13 attacks, and recognized in particular the status of victims of terrorism at the Bataclan and the inhabitants of Saint- Dennis.
The admissibility of the company managing the Bataclan room and the inhabitants of a building in Saint-Denis partially destroyed during a police assault during which two members of the jihadist commandos were killed, were among those disputed by the ministry. audience. More than 2,600 people, survivors or relatives of the 131 dead and hundreds of people injured during these attacks, as well as legal persons, have become civil parties to the criminal trial which ended on June 29 after ten months of debates.
According to the civil judgment handed down on Tuesday, four months after the verdict convicting all of the defendants, including Salah Abdeslam to incompressible life, the special assize court of Paris declared inadmissible 50 of these civil parties. Among them, the municipalities of Paris and Saint-Denis, which invoked material and image damage.
On the contrary, the judges accepted the constitutions of civil parties of a large number of direct or indirect victims, as well as companies managing the Bataclan and the various cafe terraces machine-gunned by the jihadists on November 13, 2015.
The damage suffered after the explosion of an explosive vest on November 18, 2015
The court also admitted a causal link between the offenses for which certain defendants were convicted and the damage resulting from the police assault and the explosion on November 18, 2015 of Chakib Akrouh’s explosive vest, buried in a building in Saint -Denis with the operational leader of the commandos Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Consequently, the owners and tenants of this residence in Seine-Saint-Denis who claimed recognition of their victim status and who justified their presence on the premises at the time of the events are declared admissible.
For these facts, the court declared Salah Abdeslam and twelve of his former co-defendants civilly liable and jointly and severally liable to repair the damage caused by the explosion. All of the final convicts – with the exception of Farid Kharkach, who was not convicted of terrorism – are also jointly and severally liable to repair the damage caused to the civil parties on November 13, 2015.
During the civil hearing on July 5, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) challenged the constitutions of around a hundred civil parties, considering that they were ” unfortunate witnesses and not the direct victims of the attacks.
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(With AFP)