Before he is able to venture inside what the authorities describe as the terrorists' “plot flat”, police section leader Philippe M. has to wait a good two hours. It takes that long for workmen to carry out the required shoring-up work to ensure the whole building doesn't collapse.
The already dilapidated building, which stands at the corner of rue de la République and rue du Corbillon, in the centre of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, bears the signs of the violent battle that has just taken place there. The shutters, windows and metal guard from the third-floor window are all missing. Underneath that window there are traces of blood drying on the building's facade. Below, what remains of a human head – the scalp and the start of the spinal column – lies on the pavement. A metre away is the bottom part of a face on which the beginnings of a beard can be seen.
Munitions wrappings, capsules of Bétadine disinfectant and used compresses litter the paving stones in front of the building's double-door entrance. Inside, two of the building's floors have collapsed, the pipes have been shot through and a load-bearing wall has been rendered unstable by the assault that took place in the early hours of Wednesday November 18th.
It is nearly 1.30 p.m. on that day before Philippe M. is finally able to step over a heap of several hundred spent cartridges that litter the stairs. Accompanied by a team of experts from forensics and the central laboratory at police headquarters in Paris, this officer from the local Seine-Saint-Denis département or county police (the SDPJ), north-west of Paris, is in charge of gathering evidence at a scene that resembles a war zone.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Once he reaches the third floor Philippe M. goes along the wall on the right, which is studded with impacts from rounds fired by police colleagues. Close to the framework of the first flat, the force of the police officers' shots has been so great that they ended up punching a hole in the wall. The section leader then enters the flat where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the man who coordinated the November 13th terror attacks in Paris, his cousin Hasna Aït Boulahcen, and one of the men who shot at restaurants and café terraces during the attacks, Chakib Akrouh, had all been in hiding.
In the kitchen the water heater has come away from the wall while in the living room all that remains is a table, on which lie a hi-fi system and a mobile phone. In the entrance to the living room, next to a punctured can of Oasis drink covered in dust, is the body of a seven-year-old Belgian shepherd dog. His name is Diesel, an attack dog who belonged to the elite antiterrorist police unit RAID who carried out this attack in the early hours of November 18th.
A few metres from where Diesel lies the floor of the back room has collapsed onto the floors below. Here, in front of the void which looks out over a tangle of furniture, clothes and rubble, Philippe M., whose 'brigadier' rank is midway between that of a constable and a sergeant, studies the walls riddled with holes from bullets fired by colleagues. He turns around. Above the doorpost of the living room door he finds three bullet heads. They point in the direction of the flat's entrance. They are the first traces of the terrorists' riposte to the police assault.
Outside in the street, surrounded by a bank of microphones and cameras, the minister of the interior Bernard Cazeneuve, has been insisting that his officers “came under fire for many hours in circumstances that they have never encountered up to now”. During a press conference the Paris prosecutor François Molins later speaks of “very sustained and almost uninterrupted fire” aimed at the police. This comes as a surprise to Philippe M. from the SDPJ and forensic experts at the scene. They have fully searched the rubble and have not found any other ballistic evidence supporting the idea of a hail of bullets supposedly aimed at their colleagues.
A month before the assault the RAID unit had celebrated 30 years of existence. Thirty years of glorious history which saw it neutralise the self-styled 'Human Bomb' who took hostages at a nursery school at Neuilly-sur-Seine in north-west Paris in 1993; arrest members of anarchist-communist group Action Directe, eliminate Toulouse gunman Mohamed Merah holed up in his flat in 2012, and kill Amedy Coulibaly, who took hostages at a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January 2015. The motto of the RAID unit, whose name is short for Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence, is 'Servir sans faillir' ('To serve without failing'), which has become something of a leitmotif for its 300 highly-trained officers.
On the same day, November 18th, Jean-Michel Fauvergue, who has been RAID's boss since 2013, put forward his unit's version of events in the assault during interviews with Le Figaro and Le Parisien. He described an initial “exchange of fire [that] lasted between half-and-hour and three-quarters of an hour”, and terrorists who “threw attack grenades at our feet”. He said that one of the extremists had been “injured but continued to respond with a Kalashnikov”, that “the woman present inside fired a long burst of gunshot followed by a big explosion … the woman blew herself up on her own in the flat”.... “it's then that we saw a human body, a woman's head, come out of the window and land on the pavement.”
The dog that died for France
Despite the blast which “shifted a load-bearing wall”, the head of the RAID unit said that “the Kalashnikov shots continued. Then we heard no more than one Kalashnikov, as the second [person] was killed.” On Europe 1 radio Jean-Michel Fauvergue referred to the number of shots fired by the terrorists who had “lots of ammunition, lots of magazines” as well as “a minimum of two to three Kalashnikovs”. He also spoke of his sadness about the death of Diesel “killed with a Brenneke”, the name of a make of German shotgun slugs and bullets, and which in everyday language means a shotgun cartridge. The dog's sacrifice had not been in vain, however. “Without doubt he saved the lives of police officers who were getting ready to enter,” said Fauvergue.
Diesel's fate aroused sympathy among animal lovers and the tag #jesuisunchien ('I am a dog') did the rounds of social media. The Russian government promptly offered a replacement German shepherd puppy which is currently being trained in the Moscow area. Diesel was the first RAID dog to die in service and a campaign was launched for him to be awarded a posthumous medal, as he had died for France.
It is a sad story with a touching side to it. But the problem is that the official version of the assault does not tally with the observations made by the teams from the SDPJ police department and forensics officers.
First of all, the head that landed in the street was than of a man, not a woman, as shown by the signs of a beard. This forced the prosecution authorities to correction information that had been based on a verbal report from the RAID unit and which had got much of the media excitedly reporting about a woman suicide bomber.
First of all, the head that landed in the street was than of a man, not a woman, as shown by the signs of a beard. This forced the prosecution authorities to correction information that had been based on a verbal report from the RAID unit and which had got much of the media excitedly reporting about a woman suicide bomber.
Later, Philippe M. made clear in a written report that it was the “intervention of police officers [who] caused a lot of damage in relation to the walls and the apartments' furniture” on the third floor. In a separate report his superior officer, chief inspector Raynald R., set out the different calibres of the 1,576 spent rounds of ammunition found in the communal areas of the building “in all probability coming from … shots fired by RAID police personnel”.
On the terrorists' side Chakib Akrouh had indeed detonated his explosive belt. Nuts used as grapeshot littered what remained of the floor of the apartment and the components to make a second deadly belt were also found scattered in the flat. But there was no sign of any assault rifles.
For three days teams from the SDPJ police and forensics officers returned to the scene. The police searched the different flats on the building's various floors. On November 19th the rubble was taken out into the yard after it had been “minutely sifted and inspected”. On November 20th the flats and the yard were inspected again. This time the police dug out a 9mm Browning automatic pistol. There was no magazine but it had a bullet in the chamber ready to fire. On November 21st, Czech ammunition corresponding to the handgun's calibre was finally discovered.
In a joint report dated November 24th, France's domestic intelligence agency the DGSI and the antiterrorist unit SDAT, who are in charge of the investigation, gave the definitive inventory; including the cartridge found in the Browning and the three bullets discovered by section leader Philippe M., eleven pieces of ammunition could be attributed to the terrorists.
Clearly something doesn't add up here, as this is far from suggesting the presence of sustained fire. “Our operations completed, we note that no Kalashnikov-type ammunition or weapon has been found in the course of our investigations,” wrote police sergeant Marco M. “Consequently, we are leaving the scene and returning to our unit … it is 1 p.m.” Forty-five minutes after these officers returned to the police station at Bobigny, north-east of Paris, a new team was dispatched to Bagneux, south of Paris, where the skip containing the last rubble removed from the scene of the assault was being kept. “We are going ahead with minute searches ...with the aim of discovering new ballistic material,” noted police constable Odette S. in a report. Two days later, on November 23rd, she was ordered to return there. Still nothing was found. How, then, can one explain the exchanges of fire that the RAID unit talked about?
Part of the answer can be found at the offices of the antiterrorist unit SDAT, where on November 21st Cédric V., a brigadier in the violent crimes unit OCRVP, was seconded to help with the investigation. At around 11 a.m. Cédric V., aided by three forensics experts, greeted superintendent G., the number three in RAID, and one of the unit's armourers. They had brought in for assessment the “items of ballistic protection” used in the Saint-Denis assault. These included a frame to carry shields, four shields and a helmet.
The officers from the elite RAID unit had come there reluctantly. Prudently, Cédric V. took care to write in his report any of their comments that he considered unusual. Thus he notes that superintendent G. asks him “if it will be possible to get back the items handed over, he would like to 'recycle' them for training RAID personnel”. He also notes that when the unit's armourer hands over the shield carrier he “tells us that the impact points and the various widened and protruding parts of the stand have been filed or ground down before today's presentation in order to avoid injuries to people who usually handle the said stand”.
Shields riddled with shots fired by the police
So why did the officer seek to retrieve this equipment after its first examination, even though the procedure looked like it would take a long time? Why was it felt necessary, just before this examination, to file and grind the edges of a tool that the RAID unit uses every day? Was it a clumsy attempt to hide the scientific truth about the direction from which the bullets that hit the protective equipment had come?
It is no longer possible to work out the origins of the impacts on the filed down edges of the shield bearing equipment. However, it is impossible to remove those impacts on the shields themselves. Cédric V. also scrupulously recorded the “holes” crossing the handle, a “severed” battery cable, the “five impacts” in a group; all ballistic evidence noted on the “rear sides” of the defence equipment. If, according to Mediapart's calculations, 17 impacts were recorded on the front of this equipment and can thus, in principle, be attributed to shots fired by the terrorists, at least 40 other impacts appear on the inside of the protective equipment. Thus the majority of shots sustained by the police came from their own colleagues. “The guys at the back of the assault column and the snipers fired in front of themselves, they hit the shields,” sighed one police officer.
In his interview with Le Figaro, RAID boss Jean-Michel Fauvergue spoke about the light injuries suffered by five of his men “hit in the arm, leg, hand and the bottom of the back” without elaborating on how a police officer involved in the attack could have been hit in the back. When contacted, the prosecution authorities said they “don't want to comment on police officers' injuries”.
Ahmed, a 63-year-old who was living in a flat on the same landing as the terrorists, and who was subsequently held in custody before being cleared of any involvement, has spoken about the nervousness of the police that day. He received a bullet in the arm, fired by an elite marksman posted in the building opposite. “They were shooting into my apartment, through the window, through the walls, the ceiling … I shouted so much that a police officer told me to go to the window, I thought that I was going to be evacuated by fire officers. So I went to the window, I raised my arms, I was saying 'Please, I want to get out'. At that moment my arm felt hot. I felt a very great heat, I slumped onto the bed and there was blood all over the bed. If the police officer who was in the stairwell wanted to help me, he should have called for them not to shoot at me or come to get me.”
Mohamed, an illegal immigrant who was also hit in the arm, describes a similar scenario. “I saw a police officer in the building opposite, who was speaking, but I only understood the word 'window'. So I went to the window, I opened it, I put my hands on my head and shouted 'I'm Egyptian, don't worry' then I got hit by a bullet in my left arm.” A third illegal immigrant, Noureddine, was also hit in the arm while he was looking through his apartment's fanlight. “I just saw a laser and I took a bullet. I almost died, I fell straight down, I was shocked.”
There was total confusion that morning of 18th November. So much so that there are still major doubts over the causes of the police dog Diesel's death. Jean-Michel Fauvergue, who had suggested in an initial interview that it was killed by Brenneke ammunition, later avoided repeating the make he had mentioned, which is for hunting rifles or pump-action shotguns. As has been noted, the terrorists only had an automatic pistol, while the RAID is equipped with pump-action shotguns. The mystery will remain, since the examining magistrates in charge of the inquiry into the attacks of 13th November did not deem it necessary to ask for an autopsy of the dog.
As they were searching for the supposed AK-47s on the afternoon of 18th November, the police responsible for gathering evidence found the body of Hasna Aït Boulahcen amid the wreckage of a flat on the second floor. The body of her cousin, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, had already been cleared from the debris and was lying in the living room.
The autopsies carried out over the following days established that Chakib Akrouh and Abdelhamid Abaaoud had died from the effects of the blast from the explosive belt, and Aït Boulahcen had died from suffocation. “There was no trace of injuries that would suggest gunshot wounds or wounds from ballistic-type projectiles,” one of the coroner's reports said. So not one of the three had been hit by any of the 1,500 or so rounds fired by the police.
However, the results of the post-mortem examinations pose other questions. If Abaaoud, Akrouh and Aït Boulahcen died in the explosion, how can one explain the “continuing fire from a Kalashnikov” mentioned by the head of the RAID? And although witnesses described hearing detonations between 4.20 a.m. and 5 a.m., at what and at whom were the police firing until 7.30 a.m.? Were they firing at terrorists who were already dead?
Enlargement : Illustration 3
Faced with such questions, RAID chief Fauvergue wrote a three-page report entitled Conditions d'interpellation de six individus lors de l'intervention du 18 novembre ('The circumstances of the arrest of six individuals during the intervention of 18th November') which he sent to his superiors on 20th November. The report, the existence of which was revealed by Le Monde, avoids the difficult questions and focuses on the arrests of neighbours who were illegal immigrants and were portrayed as having a “combative attitude”. However, the conditions under which the terrorists were neutralised, the time when the suicide bomber set off his explosive vest, and Diesel's death were not discussed.
But besides its contents, the very existence of this report is an acknowledgement of dysfunction during the assault. Law enforcement agencies intervened four times during the terror attacks of January and November 2015, each one leading to the deaths of the terrorists involved. The assault at Saint-Denis was the only one that required a report to be written. According to several sources, sharp words were exchanged on the RAID's return to their barracks at Bièvres, south-west of Paris, after the assault, during which some officers accused others of having refused to take their turn in the front line, while the strategy that had been adopted also came under attack.
The Paris prosecutor's office, the only authority that replied to Mediapart's questions – Fauvergue did not reply to emails, and the Interior Ministry did not return phone calls – nevertheless defended the RAID, recalling that the goal of the operation, to neutralise two terrorists, had been achieved. That is certainly true.
Reading this account, some people might be tempted to laugh at the clumsiness of those whom France had glorified after their successful assault on the Jewish supermarket Hyper Cacher in the January 2015 attacks. Mediapart is not here claiming to be a specialist in such interventions, nor is it suggesting that another strategy would definitely have been preferable to the one adopted in Saint-Denis. However, one can and should criticise media manipulation that aims to make a poorly-run operation seem like a total success.
Above all, it is important to stress that these police officers, even if they are members of an elite squad, are men and women like everyone else. And that they confront a new kind of threat in which the ultimate aim of the terrorists is to die and take a maximum number of law enforcement officers with them. This 'kamikaze' phenomenon makes police officers more risk averse, and it gnaws away inside them, altering their judgement, particularly if they have a family. This factor needs to be factored into how future crisis scenarios are prepared.
On the morning of 18th November, 2015, at around 4 a.m., 70 RAID officers had advanced into the night and into the unknown. An official from the SDAT antiterrorism unit had pointed out the building in which two perpetrators of the worst-ever attacks in Paris had taken refuge. The columns went into the building at 4.15 a.m. They had been briefed by anti-terrorism investigators that two men, including the possible mastermind of the attacks, plus a woman had been seen entering the building with backpacks.
In principle they did not have room to hide assault rifles. But a witness had popped up who insisted that Abaaoud had said there were 90 terrorists hiding out in the greater Paris area ready to go into action, and that an attack was said to be in preparation to hit the capital's La Défense business district. Aït Boulahcen had apparently boasted that she had played with a Kalashnikov in the Saint-Denis apartment.
As they went up the steps leading to the third floor, those in the first column must have wondered if they were perhaps heading into a trap. At 4.20 a.m. the munitions specialist set off explosives to open the door of the apartment, but as it was not an armoured door the blast had no effect on the wood. The door did not open.
The plan devised by the group's strategists had not worked and the officers had to improvise. So they filled the place with gunfire. They fired so as not to let the terrorists catch their breath and to stop them from carrying out their suicide plans. They fired to reassure themselves. And they went on firing. It was 4.22 a.m. and the RAID officers were afraid.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter and Sue Landau