After nearly three months of hearings, the trial of the attack of July 14, 2016 is entering its concluding phase with the start this Wednesday of the pleadings of civil parties, which must last until December 2. Two-thirds of the lawyers for victims and their relatives agreed to first deliver a plea with several voices.
The lawyers for the civil parties tried to convince the court of the involvement of the main defendants in the murderous act of July 14, 2016, which was ” not the result of chance, even less the work of a madman “. In the absence of the author, killed during the attack that left 86 dead on the Promenade des Anglais at the wheel of a ram truck, eight defendants have been tried since September 5 by the special assize court of Paris.
Like the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015, which was held in the same room reserved for large hearings, at the Palais de Justice in Paris, around fifty lawyers have planned a ” coordinated advocacy “, first addressing the criminal aspect of the case, before mentioning the ” injuries of victims from Thursday afternoon. And it is with a reflection on time that Me Morain opens the pleadings, of these fragments of a second which have changed the lives of the victims to this ” life sentence, out of time they have endured ever since.
His colleagues then outline the context of the attacks, dwell on the disputed perimeter of the association of terrorist criminals, oppose the hypothesis of a deranged killer, who would have deliberately wanted to implicate certain defendants. Of the accused who got stuck in their lies later castigated Me Colombani, denouncing a strategy combining ” denial and forgetting “.
A part of shadow
The criticisms made by the lawyers for the civil parties particularly echoed the feelings of Stephane Erbs, co-president of the association of Victims Promenade des Anges:
It is obvious that all the defendants have found a parade in the lie, find a way to minimize their involvement. I do not believe at all that they let go one day because it is the posture that they have adopted for six years and somehow not telling the truth is a protection. Obviously, this is a source of frustration for all the victims, we wanted truth, clarity and we didn’t get it. So that leaves parts of doubt at the level of what took place during the preparatory days and also a few minutes before the attack. It leaves this dark side which we know we will never get any information about.
The association’s lawyer Me Rajon nevertheless urged the defendants to ” grow and take responsibility during their last words, the “ccondition so that the victims can tell themselves that humanity is certainly capable of the worst, but that it nevertheless knows how to learn from its mistakes “.
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(And with AFP)