Paris, June 29 (AFP/APP):A French court is to hand down verdicts Wednesday against 20 men accused over the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, after a marathon 10-month trial that reopened the scars of modern France’s worst peacetime atrocity.
One hundred and thirty people were killed on the night of November 13, 2015, when terrorists laid siege to the French capital, attacking the national sports stadium, bars and the Bataclan concert hall.
The trial that began on September 8, 2021, has been the biggest in modern French history, the culmination of a six-year, multi-country investigation the findings of which run to more than a million pages.
A panel of five judges have been deliberating at a secret location since Monday. The court session had still yet to open Wednesday evening, and with the reading of the conclusions set to take several hours, the delivery of the verdicts may only come late in the night.
There were long queues and tight security outside the courthouse as survivors and relatives of victims sought to witness the climax to the trial.
Arthur Denouveaux, head of the Life for Paris survivors’ group, said that after nine gruelling months, people were ready for the end.
“I’m not that interested in the verdicts in themselves. It’s really about saying ‘That’s it. It’s behind us. The justice system has done its work, we can move on’,” he told AFP.
Life for Paris itself said it would dissolve in the wake of the verdict.
“The end of the trial must also mark the beginning of the ‘after’ that we all hope for, even if we do not know its shape,” it said.
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