Paris attacks trial: 'I wanted to see them, to tell them all they've taken from me'

AA keen fisherman, Roman, now aged 30, escaped the terrorists' bullets at the La Belle Équipe restaurant in Paris when it came under attack as part of the terrorist assault on the capital in 2015, but his partner, Jessica, was seriously wounded. They also lost one of their best friends. Here Roman gives his evidence to the Paris trial of the 20 individuals accused of perpetrating or helping to carry out those terrorist attacks on November 13th 2015.

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“October 1st. That date worried me for months. It seemed to me like an insurmountable peak. Ever since November 13th 2015 it's been very difficult to look ahead, so when my partner and I had confirmation that we were going to give evidence, at first the date seemed distant to me. Then, in mid-August, I started to get knots in my stomach. It took me back 20 years. It felt like going back to school and the end of the holidays.

On September 8th, the day the trial opened, I went through the security checks, I had no saliva left, I found it hard to climb up the steps of the court building. I entered the courtroom during a break, and went up the central aisle like an automaton and headed towards the dock. I wanted to see the accused, I wanted to tell them all they've taken from me. At that moment everything was mixed up in my head. A gendarme stopped me, I couldn't go any further. I got a grip on myself. I came back out of the court exhausted and with lots of questions.

Why give evidence? Why inflict all that on yourself? How can you sum up November 13th and its consequences in a few minutes?

There ensued whole evenings discussing the night of the attacks with those who escaped. In particular with Marko in front of La Belle Équipe. The same place where our lives changed dramatically and where our friend Victor was murdered like 20 other people that November evening. To speak again and again, about the minutest detail, even the most terrifying. To give words to the unspeakable. In order to feel alive, in order not to forget.

On September 29th, two days before giving evidence, we met up to exchange and read the first drafts of our texts. There were five of us: Jessica, Marko, Nathan, Thomas and myself. Our texts at the time consisted of a few lines. Thanks to that evening spent with the members of my Belle Équipe [editor's note, the words mean 'great team'], I found the answers to my questions.

First of all, and this was a certainty, we were going to manage to give evidence, perhaps overcome with emotion and fear, but more than anything we were going to do it in memory of our friend Victor.

We were also going to do it out of friendship and love; for the other victims of November 13th and their loved ones; for our families and our friends who were also indirect victims; so that it was not forgotten; for our lifestyle that came under attack; for the truth; to fight against this deadly ideology; to ensure that our suffering was not manipulated; to avoid any form of misrepresentation that would seek to divide; to oppose those who advocate hated of others. Finally, we were going to do it so that this horror could never happen again.

In the end the much-dreaded October 1st arrived, and this is what I said to the special criminal court:

“Mr President

If I have decided to give evidence here today - with no little emotion - it's in honour of my friend Victor who was murdered at La Belle Équipe and for all the other victims of those attacks.

I was born in 1991 at Saint-Antoine hospital, 500 metres from La Belle Équipe. Paris has always been my backdrop and East Paris is my home. I grew up in the 20th [editor's note, arrondissement or district] and later in the 22nd arrondissement, at Porte de Saint-Mandé. I'm going back a bit far but I think it's important for the rest of my evidence.

I met Marko, my best friend, at middle school and all the rest of my mates present at La Belle Équipe at the Maurice-Ravel secondary school in the 20th arrondissement, between the Hyper Cacher [kosher supermarket] and the Place de la Nation. When I say 'mates', I could also say 'brothers'. We grew up together, we learnt together, we forged our personalities together and on that evening we experienced the worst together.

Above all, thanks to that secondary school I met my partner. Our history began with a stolen kiss in front of Victor's house, 500 metres from La Belle Équipe, just before the results of the bac [editor's note, the baccalauréat exam taken at the end of secondary school studies], and we've been together ever since.

After secondary school we all took different routes. For me, it was economics at the university on the other side of the [River] Seine. My Paris was expanding. Other stories, other memories, but at the end of each week, it would be this group of friends, and it would always be Jess. Always.

In 2015 I finished my studies with a master's in economics in the public sector and I had just started a new career, as a student entrepreneur, to develop an idea of what I really cared about.

November 13th was Jess's birthday; the woman I love, a woman who is free, independent, beautiful and different, who makes me laugh, who can annoy me, who is sociable, and brings people together. The woman whose partner I am proud to be. The woman who has taught me a great deal and opened my eyes to racism, feminism, tolerance and so many other things.

On the afternoon of November 13th we went together to the 'Paris-Photo' exhibition at the Grand-Palais [editor's note, on the Champs-Élysées]. We parted at the end of the afternoon, to meet up again that evening at La Belle Équipe to celebrate her birthday. I got there around 8pm. Some mates were already there. We chatted about this and that, we laughed, we were enjoying a lovely evening. I went out to smoke a cigarette with Victor. It would be the last time I'd speak to him. I went back inside, to the left as you go in, facing the patio door. We ordered something to eat and drink, the evening was under way. At 9.36pm, my life changed dramatically.

The shooting started. The light went off straight away, we all ended up under the table. I knew right away that it was an attack. I told a friend to lie on the floor and I warned them that the explosions were not fireworks. I had just one thought while I was on the floor: Jess was outside. I tried to tell myself that it was going to be okay, that perhaps she had got away from the terrace just before, that perhaps she'd managed to escape. Perhaps.

The shooting stopped. I got up straight away. I was standing in the middle of chaos. I wanted to go and see if she was alive. They were reloading, the shooting started again and I got back down on the floor. At each instant I told myself that the next bullet was going to be for me. Ninety-six seconds under fire is a long time, you have time to think about a lot of things. I reflected that the hands that I was putting on my head wouldn't be much use against bullets. After a minute the shots stopped.

I called to my mates on the floor, under the tables, to see if they were hit. Someone called out: “Get up, they've gone.” I rushed to the terrace with Nathan. Marko and Thomas stayed inside, that's another story. Jess was just in front of the entrance, tangled up among the wounded … She was alive, she was hit everywhere, including an enormous hole the size of an apple on the inside of her thigh. I made a tourniquet with my shirt. I tore off her clothes to see the rest of her wounds, it was horrific.

It was chaos around us. There are no words to describe this scene of massacre, the word that comes to mind is butchery, there was so much skinless flesh on this terrace. I saw cartridge cases everywhere, the smell of blood that covered the pavement mixed with that of gunpowder. I'll never forget it.

People were crying out, suffering, dying.

The minutes ticked by, the emergency services arrived and they were stunned. Everyone was overcome. Jess knew that she was going to die. She told me her final words … I told her that it was going to be okay. I repeated the words 'it's going to be okay' like a mantra to reassure but also to persuade myself. It couldn't end like this. She was losing strength, we urged the emergency services to do something. We kept on at them. I alternated between slaps and kisses. Thanks to us keeping on at the emergency services they took her to a kebab place opposite La Belle Équipe and not to Le Petit Baïona [editor's note, another restaurant], the [designated] advanced medical post. I'm sure we'll never know why.

The TV at the back of the kebab place was already talking about the attacks. It was too much for me, I asked my mate Marko to turn it off, before he managed to I smashed it. The periods of falling asleep were getting longer and longer, she was losing too much blood. Fuck it, what were we doing all alone in a kebab place? She was dying!

I was afraid we'd been forgotten. Nathan, Marko and I badgered the emergency services, we begged them to evacuate us. They told us that we couldn't take an ambulance without a doctor. We had to wait...We badgered them again and again. In the end, Jess could be evacuated without a doctor. I got into the ambulance with Nathan. To go where? The decision was taken to go to the Pitié-Salpêtrière [editor's note, a hospital just under two miles away on the other side of the River Seine]. The firefighters [editor's note, in France it is often the fire brigade who provide emergency first aid] didn't know how to get there. Nathan had to put on his GPS. We crossed Paris at night, at top speed, siren blaring. I held onto Jess on the bends so that she didn't fall off the stretcher. She lost consciousness altogether when we arrived at the hospital. Everything started to move more quickly, a medical team was waiting for us to arrive. We got out at the same time and didn't leave her. When we got to the lift, the doctors told us that we couldn't go any further.

I didn't find out until the next day, but in the lift was Yann, an intensive care doctor at Pitié who took charge of Jess. He is the older brother of one of her best [female] friends, who was also at La Belle Équipe that evening and who was very seriously wounded. He considers Jess like family and vice versa. Jess was the second victim taken to Pitié. The first died on arrival.

Those three hours passed in a second. I went over all Jess's wounds in my head to evaluate her chances of survival. I lost hope but I had to hold on, to hope. Friends and family, we waited for part of the night in a canteen at Pitié that was being used as a crisis cell. During those hours of horror on the terrace a kind of fog had come down. I was sure of just one thing: Marko, Thomas and Nathan were alive. Jess and Éva were very seriously wounded. I learnt that [other friends] Méline and Ida were also hurt and that Victor was fighting for his life.

At around 5am some doctors came to inform us about the state of our loved ones. Living or dead. My legs could no longer support me. They addressed me by my name, my identity card was in the coat that was covering her. She was stable with several bullets in the abdomen, and the next few hours were going to be critical.... I stayed at the hospital a few more hours. I got home early in the morning. My November 13th night had come to an end; our lives had changed dramatically within a few seconds. An interlude in my life had just begun and I still didn't know if it would ever come to an end.

After one or two hours of sleep I went to the Floréal clinic at Bagnolet [editor's note, in the east Paris suburbs] to get my hand stitched. In the waiting room I got a call, Victor was dead. My mother collapsed. My thoughts turned to his parents, his brother and his partner, Alexandra. I was faced with other issues too, waiting and worrying. Each morning I dreaded getting a call telling me that Jess has succumbed to her wounds. One morning, after thirteen days of being in an artificial coma, she was taken off the ventilator. At last I could talk to her. One day before Victor's burial, his sister Clara and I had to break the sad news to her: Victor was dead.

There followed weeks at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital punctuated by operations, bad news and the discovery of neuropathic pain. Each morning I lingered at the coffee machine at Pitié, feeling as if I were in the corridor of death and that when I went up I'd find her bed empty. After a time in orthopaedics, Jess was transferred to Les Invalides [hospital in central Paris] between Christmas and New Year, where Éva was waiting for her and where Ida was not long in arriving either.

On the 31st I stayed at her side during a sleepless New Year's Eve broken by cries of pain and periods of respite when the painkillers took effect. There have been hundreds of other nights like that, a figure which has continued to grow. There is nothing worse than seeing your loved one suffering almost to the point of death, and I would not wish it on anyone, apart from the people in the dock, but I doubt if they are still capable of having feelings.

For me, the night of November 13th, with its horrific visions, was nightmarish. What followed was yet worse still. At Les Invalides the nursing team was exemplary and despite the circumstances some unforgettable moments took place. Going from an electrical wheelchair to a manual one, the first trips out, the first steps, each progress was a victory. After two years of relentless physiotherapy work, Jess came back to our home standing up. That, in a few words, was my November 13th.

November 13th changed me irretrievably, you don't emerge unscathed from such an atrocity. I keep going so that I don't collapse. Since that date I've always felt tense, I'm always on the alert. For two years I kept a knife at the bottom of my pocket it case it started again. I've constantly got the feeling that things could turn at any moment. This gnawing anxiety is tinged with sadness. Not a passing sadness but something deep rooted. A sadness that I try all the time to push away, which I hide, which I camouflage, but which follows me like a shadow, a sadness over past events that nothing can ever change. I live with the trauma, I hang on, you hang on so as not to let them win. In Paris everything takes me back to the 13th, to one district, one street, one park, one bar, one sound. Each time I now cross my city it's a journey of memories. From now on I hate Paris as much as I love it.

When I learnt that I was going to give evidence a few metres from those who turned my life upside down, who killed and mutilated so many beautiful people, I wanted to heap abuse on them, to show them the deep disgust I feel for them. Now that I see them, pitiful and cowardly, most of them asking for mercy or stuttering inanities straight out of 'terrorism for losers', I just want to send them my contempt and scorn. In a few years you will be forgotten and all that will remain will be the memory of those who left us. Our Republic's justice will strike you down and you will disappear from history.

On that November evening you attacked people of all origins, of all religions and even atheists of whom I'm one. We haven't fallen into your trap, whose blatancy demonstrates your stupidity. France is not divided, it's holding firm.

Victor, I love you.”

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• The original French version of Roman's words can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter