Paris is remembering Bataclan victims 10 years on as France honours 130 dead. Photo / Ludovic Marin, AFP
France today marks a decade since suffering its worst attack, with the only surviving assailant jailed for life and plans for a long-term memorial.
Jihadists killed 130 people in shootings and suicide bombings in and around Paris on the night of November 13, 2015, with Isis claiming responsibility.
The attackers killed around 90 people at the Bataclan concert hall, where the US band Eagles of Death Metal was playing.
They ended the lives of dozens more at Parisian restaurants and cafes, and one person near the Stade de France football stadium just outside the capital, where crowds were watching France play Germany.
President Emmanuel Macron is expected to visit all sites of the attacks, before presiding over a remembrance ceremony at a memorial garden in central Paris.
The sole surviving member of the 10-person jihadist cell that staged the attacks, 36-year-old Salah Abdeslam, is serving life in jail, after nine fellow attackers blew themselves up or were killed by police.
“France over these years has been able to stand united and overcome it all,” Francois Hollande, who was President at the time, told AFP in a recent interview.
Hollande was in the crowd at the football stadium when the attacks erupted. He was whisked out of the audience before re-appearing on national television later that night, describing what had happened as a “horror”.
He declared France “at war” with the jihadists and their self-proclaimed caliphate, then straddling Syria and Iraq.
Hollande testified at the 148-day trial that led to Abdeslam being jailed for life in 2022.
He said he remembered telling the defendants, who also included suspects accused of plotting or offering logistical support, that they had been given defence lawyers despite having committed “the unforgivable”.
“We are a democracy, and democracy always wins in the end,” he said he told them.
United States-backed forces in 2019 in eastern Syria defeated the last remnants of the Isis proto-state that attracted French residents and inspired the Paris attacks.
Abdeslam remains behind bars and is open to the idea of speaking to victims of the attacks if they want to take part in a “restorative justice” initiative, according to his lawyer Olivia Ronen.
The convicted jihadist’s ex-girlfriend, with whom he broke up earlier this year, has, however, been arrested and was on this week charged with plotting a jihadist attack. The investigation is ongoing.
In Paris, survivors and the relatives of those killed have attempted to rebuild their lives.
Eva, who asked that her second name not be used, had her leg amputated below the knee after she was wounded when jihadists attacked a cafe called La Belle Equipe, killing 21 people.
She has since returned to the capital’s many cafe terraces but said she will “never again” have her back to the street.
The names of those who were killed, as well as those of two people who took their own lives after, have been inscribed on commemorative plaques around Paris.
A museum is to conserve their memory.
The Terrorism Memorial Museum, due to open in 2029, is to house around 500 objects linked to the attacks or its victims, most contributed by the bereaved families to curators.
The collection includes a concert ticket donated by a mother who lost her only daughter at the Bataclan, and the unfinished guitar of a luthier (repairer) who was also killed at the concert.
It also contains a blackboard menu of La Belle Equipe riddled with bullet holes, still bearing the words “Happy Hour”.
The events of the autumn evening have also been committed to memory in books and screenplays.
But some survivors and relatives of victims approach tributes with apprehension.
Stephane Sarrade’s 23-year-old son Hugo was killed at the Bataclan, a place he’s avoided since.
“I am incapable of going there,” he told AFP, adding he would stay away from the ceremonies.
Nadia Mondeguer, whose daughter Lamia was killed aged 30 at La Belle Equipe, said she had been in two minds about the 10-year anniversary.
“I’ve been feeling like a fever coming over me ... the adrenaline starting to rise again,” Mondeguer said.
She said she felt that she and other victims had been included in official ceremonies as mere “spectators”.
But she said she would go anyway to a ceremony at La Belle Equipe to see other relatives.
-Agence France-Presse