Georges Salines, 64, is a retired doctor who worked for a public health agency, where he was specialised in environmental issues. The married father-of-three lost his daughter Lola, 28, in the shooting massacre at the Bataclan concert hall on November 13th 2015.
In January 2016, two months after the terrorist attacks, he and other victims created an association called ‘13onze15:Fraternité et Vérité’ (13eleven15: Fraternity and Truth) which he presided until September 2017, and which he is now honorary president of.
In January 2020 he published a book of conversations with Azdyne Amimour, the father of Samy Amimour, one of the terrorist gunmen who attacked the Bataclan. The book, entitled ‘Il nous reste les mots’ (roughly translatable as, ‘Words are what remain for us’) followed an initial contact between the two in 2018. They have engaged together on a campaign to combat radicalisation and conversion to jihadism, and Georges Salines has regularly been invited by secondary schools to speak to pupils about the subject.
As the November 2015 attacks trial continues, he describes here his reactions to the cross-examinations this month of the families of the terrorists who attacked the Bataclan, and notably those of the father and sister of Samy Amimour.
***
December 10th was a day that I had marked up since quite some while in my diary for the trial. It was then that the father and the sister of Samy Amimour, one of the three terrorists at the Bataclan, the one who was the first to be killed following the shots of the commissaire [editor's note, equivalent to a superintendent, or captain] from the BAC [police unit] and his driver, and the explosion of his [Amimour’s bomb] belt.
This father, Azdyne Amimour, is someone I know well. We see each other regularly and we have written a book together [see above]. I had never met his daughter, Maya.
I was a bit tense because, knowing well about the events and his way of telling them, I asked myself how Azdyne’s testimony was going to be received. I was anticipating and apprehending what might be frustrating and even disconcerting for the court and the civil parties.
The stress was aggravated by the fact that this testimony had been preceded by the questions that were raised by the account of the DGSI [French domestic intelligence agency] investigator of the background of Samy Amimour. He had said that during Azdyne’s statement given in police custody, the latter had asserted that if he had travelled all the way to Turkey in search of his son, he was unable to cross the border with Syria, and that he had subsequently embellished his account in order to “reassure his wife”. These questions over the veracity of the meeting between Azdyne and Samy within the Islamic State [-controlled territory] were the subject of a fact-checking article published by [French daily] Libération on December 6th which, without reaching a conclusion, left doubts hanging.
As soon as this particular subject was broached, Azdyne explained that he had not told the truth while he was in custody, that he had indeed gone to Syria. He recounted his journey in the same manner that he had done so with me on numerous occasions. But obviously (‘obviously’ because it is a recurrent problem with him), he mixed up dates, said that the journey was in July of 2014 whereas it was in June. Well yes, he’s like that Azdyne. He can recite by heart the poems of Victor Hugo and yet not remember the order in which important events in his life occurred.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
There followed a laborious series of questions and answers when the presiding magistrate and his assessors themselves lost their bearings. The presiding magistrate insisted further about the fact that Azdyne had said: “I remember it was in July because it was during the World Cup.” The presiding magistrate said, “Indeed, the World Cup was in July”. No Mr presiding magistrate, it had begun on June 12th. The presiding magistrate and his assessors said the proclamation of the Islamic State was June 21st 2014 (it was the 29th).
Later on, in order to explain that he had not been able to return to Syria as was his intention after returning back to France, Azdyne said, “I did not return [to Syria] because there were bombing raids in between times”, and the presiding magistrate pointed out that “the bombing raids were rather in September 2015”. But once again he got it wrong. While the first French air strikes in Syria did indeed happen in September 2015, the international coalition was bombing the Islamic State since September 23rd 2014. Seated on my bench, I was fulminating.
I want to whisper the correct answers, but it was not me who the teacher called to the blackboard. Once the court was more or less convinced that Azdyne Amimour had indeed gone to Syria to look for his son, it questioned whether he hadn’t stayed there for longer than he said: Azdyne said he had seen Samy with crutches, whereas the DGSI (and, apparently, Samy’s sister Maya) placed the injury in August 2014. But on what objective elements was this dating based? Hadn’t Samy quite simply been injured earlier than was thought?
Whatever, the dates of Azdyne’s journey are perfectly established, and they are so on the basis of material proof: one could have gained time by just simply verifying the dates of his entry and exit from Turkish territory that are stamped on his passport – June 13th 2014 and July 2nd 2014! (With thanks to Myriam François, a Franco-British documentary maker, for having thought of doing so and for sending me the photos).
From these confusions over dates on the subject of a journey about which there is – for me at least – no room for doubt, in the end only emerged the memory difficulties of an old man in poor health, and who it was perhaps not necessary to submit to such a lengthy interrogation.
It was perhaps unnecessary also to employ a sometimes accusatory tone towards a witness. It was thus that Stéphane Saidani, a lawyer for the civil parties, pointed out: “You notice that your son was on a wayward course but you say that as long as at home there was no trouble one closes one’s eyes. You say that if at the time there was a hotline for [radicalisation cases like] your son you would have called it. Yet the hotline exists. It was put in place on April 29th 2014.”
Lawyer Saïdani is not mistaken about the date of the activation of the “Stop jihadism” hotline, but when the number had entered into service, Samy Amimour had already joined up with the Islamic State for some while (September 2013). So, at the time when his parents could have sought help to prevent his departure, there was no hotline and hardly any recourse for families confronted with the radicalisation of their children.
This incapacity to halt the infernal machine that was being put into place was well and truly the central element in Azdyne’s account, and that of Maya. And, without a hotline or support from the public authorities, what struck me – as I believe it had struck all those who listened to these testimonies – was to what degree this incapacity was caused by the lack of communication within the Amimour family about subjects which lead to arguments.
Azdyne and Zahia Amimour gave their children material security. They had been examples of an open and tolerant Islam, of respect for the values of the [French] republic. They have an attachment to education (Mrs Amimour works in a school) and to the culture which without any doubt helped the three children to succeed in their studies. But in face of the wayward path taken by Samy, one said nothing, each looked the other way while hoping it would pass. As Maya said during her testimony: “I think everyone wanted to protect everyone, so that my mother was not sad. It must have created a vicious circle.” It seems to me that there is in this an important lesson for the construction of a doctrine for prevention, and to avoid new tragedies.
And amid this silence, that which Maya spoke of, was unfortunately Samy, in Syria. While he had always ignored her, this elder brother (he was six years older than her) began bombarding her with messages, initially innocuous and then evermore serious, attempting religious indoctrination, with accounts of military exploits, appeals for her to join him, and requests for help with the departure of two “fiancés”: one of these was soon prevented thanks to the vigilance of the father of the betrothed, while the other saw the departure of Kahina who would marry Samy in the [Islamic State] zone [in Syria].
Maya appears not to have been receptive to the religious talk from her brother, nor to his invitations for her to depart for the Islamic State, but she would obey him by serving as an intermediary with the two young women, which has led to her now being placed under formal investigation by the justice system. As she said when she took to the witness box: “My paternal figure was my brother Samy […] It was important for me to exist in his eyes.”
Maya’s testimony was very moving, and she was able to find words that were just, without any oratory affectation but which were joined by her tears: “Six years afterwards, I am still angry against him, I still feel shame to have the same name as him. I feel shame regarding the victims. To say I am sorry is a euphemism. There are no words strong enough to describe that.”
Maya is 28-years-old. The age her brother had on November 13th 2015. The age of my daughter Lola when she died that day. When she left the stand, I accompanied her to the exit of the courtroom, where another civil party hugged her in her arms.
-------------------------
Christophe Naudin, 46, is a history teacher at a French secondary school. On the evening of November 13th 2015, he was attending a concert by US rock band Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan music hall in central Paris when three gunmen, acting in the name of the so-called Islamic State group, attacked the venue, killing 90 people, including a close friend of his. Naudin hid for several hours in a storage room before the terrorists were shot and killed by police. While he escaped largely unscathed physically, he has recurrently suffered from the severe effects of post-traumatic stress.
Like Georges Salines above, here he describes his own reactions to the cross-examinations, at the November 2015 attacks trial this month, of the families of the terrorists who attacked the Bataclan.
***
Since the beginning of the trial I have said that the accused (and their dead associates) are of no interest to me. However, the debates have made me change a little, as has also the atmosphere in and around the courtroom. To behold on each occasion the so very ordinary faces and looks of the guys in the dock, or to eat a sandwich beside one of them (who is not in detention) in the venerable waiting hall, makes one think.
Still more was to listen to their story. That began at the time of “the study of personalities”, even if “the events” were not mentioned. The questioning of the terrorists’ families, which has begun, provides me with other elements to reflect upon, which I didn’t necessarily expect.
It was the testimony of the Amimour family which I came to listen to as a priority. I don’t know his father, his sisters or his mother, but I have the feeling of knowing him [Samy Amimour] a little. Obviously not personally, but “intimately”, if I might put it that way. It’s him who I distinctly saw (and identified), behind me, at the Bataclan. His eyes filled with hate, that little sadistic smile, and the flames spitting out from the barrel of his Kalashnikov. And it’s probably on his blood that I slipped when I came out of my boxroom, a piece of his flesh (or of his brains) that ran down an amplifier, his head having been found nearby.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
That the man who coldly shot people down – before he himself was shot by the BAC – had played the xylophone on the stage didn’t render him any nicer in my eyes. So, subsequently, I needed to know a bit more about him and his background. It was therefore logical, at least for that reason, to want to hear his family.
I vaguely remember having heard Azdyne Amimour speak, I think in 2016, in an interview in which he recounted a police raid on his home which, according to him, had traumatised his son. I only learnt much later the reason: Samy was suspected of wanting to leave to take up jihad with two friends, and he had been since the end of 2012 on probation. Which didn’t prevent him from travelling to Syria in 2013, and to return, to the Bataclan, on November 13th 2015.
That information shows, in any case, that he had not been radicalised “overnight” as his father sometimes says, and who on top presents him in several interviews as a victim “like the others”. Not considering terrorists to be “victims”, full stop, and having great difficulty in putting up with that argument in general, I was a little apprehensive about that day.
The article by Willy Le Devin from [French daily] Libération questioned the different accounts given by Azdyne Amimour about his departure for Syria. The day before, Mediapart published an interview with him, and I expected that his cross-examination would take place in the same style. And I had discussed a bit with Georges (whose book of conversations with him I am familiar with) two days earlier, attempting to stand back and take stock before things began.
Despite that, my reactions were contrasted. Amimour’s hesitations and some contradictions occasionally exasperated me, just as did also his very self-centred manner of speaking firstly about himself (I am far from being the only one to have noticed that), to have no words for the victims, to not let show any empathy, even for his family. I don’t know him, perhaps it’s his character.
But it remains that about Syria, despite the trouble with dates, I think he told the truth, that he did indeed go there. As to the true reason one can ask oneself questions, notably because he was able to come back (the Islamic State doesn’t let people leave easily). But the article in [French daily] Le Monde in 2014 (so before November 13th 2015), when he was interviewed (using a pseudonym) about his journey, leads me to believe that there also he is telling the truth. But, above all, my aim was not to know if he was lying or not. I wanted to understand how his son had tipped over [into jihad].
Obviously, there, it was a disappointment, at the first stage in any case. The hearing, despite the precautions taken by the presiding magistrate and certain lawyers, rapidly turned into an interrogation, even a lesson on morals, making a virtual suspect of Azdyne Amimour, and many of us felt a mixture of unease and irritation. Even though I didn’t appreciate seeing an elderly man shaken up in that way, I asked myself questions about his lack of explanations.
How could the family have been so powerless, despite the series of indications and events over several years? It was the testimony of the sister, Maya, which, in the end, enlightened and calmed me. Much clearer than her father, she in her own manner explained this helplessness: the non-communication. She also raised, without explicitly using the word, the hold that her brother exercised upon her as of the moment he left for Syria. Which allegedly led her to recruit a wife for him (an ongoing case).
My frustration persisted, but no longer really regarding the Amimour family. When Maya spoke of her shame, I had a strange and paradoxical feeling: I wanted to thank her for doing what her father had not done, while also believing that she was not responsible for her brother’s acts, and so she did not have to excuse herself or have shame. I listened with more detachment to the testimony of the father of Mostefaï [Ismaël Omar Mostefaï, another of the three terrorists at the Bataclan], perhaps because I feel less “close” to his son, and because his attitude was… curious. Between the lines, he did however say some interesting things, without necessarily wanting to.
All of that, like the very diverse reactions to these testimonies, whether it be from the press or the civil parties, shows the complexity of the problem. I have continued to discuss, sometimes bitterly, with fellow victims, with people close to me. I notably took into account the reactions of my aunt. She, who has worked with the PJJ [probation services for young offenders] and in prisons, and has had “radicalised” cases as “clients”, tells me that families always have a role, a share of responsibility, at different levels, and she can’t tolerate the fact that this is too often forgotten.
Yet I sometimes have the impression that, reading the journalists’ reports or discussing with people who listened to these testimonies, that all of that was in vain, that the families should not have been made to suffer by such a grilling, that their accounts on the stand served no purpose. But nevertheless, we’re there to understand.
Why would the role of the family be the only angle that should be avoided during the hearings? Since the beginning of the trial, and even before, on the outside, like just outside the courtroom, there is talk of the responsibility of politicians, of the security services, social frustrations, dropping out of school, internet, video games, imperialism, and yet more. And would the family have no role? How can one understand the place the close entourage have in the process of radicalisation if they are not questioned about it on the stand?
For the moment it seems like not very much, but I believe that, standing back, the questioning of Azdyne and Maya Amimour provided the beginning of an answer about Samy’s radicalisation. The manifest absence of communication within the family stupefied me, and it could explain, at least in part, the isolation of the future terrorist and his crossing of the line. The little that was said by the father of Mostefaï had also, for me, provided a few elements, like the role played by certain mosques.
In any case, we won’t know everything, we’ll have to manage with our frustration. But I think, even more so than before, that to listen to the families is necessary, without making judgements about their education or implicitly making them accomplices, even though the temptation to do so is understandable when one is angry. We know who the truly guilty are. When it will be the turn of the accused – those who are still alive – perhaps the joining up of their testimony with that of their close entourage will produce something. Even if that will certainly provoke the anger of an Abrini [Mohamed Abrini, one of the defendants] pretending to defend the innocence of Samy’s sister, whereas he probably was only thinking about himself. Because, contrary to Maya Amimour, he has every reason to be ashamed.
-------------------------
- The original French versions of the above accounts by Georges Salines and Christophe Naudin can be found, respectively, here and here.
English versions by Graham Tearse