Madrid, November 12 (Europe Press) –
This Thursday, France will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks in the capital Paris on November 13, 2015. The attack was a series of coordinated attacks by members of the Islamic State group across the city, killing at least 130 people and injuring more than 400, making it the deadliest attack ever on European territory.
The attack began when three suicide bombers detonated their own bombs near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, which had become inaccessible during an international match, and continued with attacks on cafes and restaurants, and then the Bataclan theater, where the American group Eagles of Death Metal was holding a concert, which caused the most casualties.
The Bataclan Hall massacre, which left 90 people dead and hundreds injured, included a hostage-taking incident during a concert attended by nearly 1,500 people, but special forces stormed the theater and succeeded in killing the terrorists, one of whom detonated himself during the shooting.
The attack was carried out by three different terrorist groups, seven of whom died during the attack, and three others, including Abdelhamid Abadoud, believed to be the “mastermind”, in a police raid in Saint-Denis a few days later. The sole survivor, Brussels-born Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in Belgium in 2016 and sentenced to life in prison in 2022 for his role in the attack.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming it was in retaliation for French bombings of targets by the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria, where then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had declared a “caliphate” after lightning strikes from northern Iraqi territory.
The attack was the deadliest in a European Union member state since the Madrid attack in 2004, and comes months after France declared a state of alert following attacks in January 2015 that killed 17 people at the headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
French authorities responded to the attack by imposing a three-month state of emergency to step up security forces’ efforts in the fight against terrorism, and two days later, Paris launched its largest bombing campaign as part of Operation Chamal against Islamic State in the Middle East.
Indeed, then-French President Francois Hollande called the attack an “act of war” and deployed thousands of soldiers to sensitive areas such as transport stations and places of worship to strengthen security against jihadists, but the country was also the scene of the June 2016 attack in Nice in which 86 people were killed when a man was deliberately run over by a truck during an event celebrating France’s National Day.
commemorative event
The main memorial service for the victims will take place this Thursday, but from November 8th Parisians are invited to place candles, flowers or notes of remembrance at the Statue of the Republic in memory of the victims, survivors, families of victims, agents and members of the rescue team.
The Paris mayor’s office also installed a giant screen in Place de la République to broadcast the November 13th memorial event in the gardens. The event will also be broadcast directly on television networks TF1 and France 2, and will also be attended by President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
The aforementioned garden, scheduled to be inaugurated on the same day on Thursday in memory and remembrance of the victims, is located in Place Saint-Gervais and was constructed in agreement with the families of the victims to define the memorial project.
The ceremony will begin shortly after noon in front of a commemorative plaque erected at the site of the attack in 2016, but the main event will be a ceremony hosted by the gardens on November 13, which is not scheduled to be open to the public for security reasons.
Recently, Paris has also hosted a number of exhibitions featuring French and international artists who were in Paris on the day of the attacks, photographs taken on that day, and part of the future permanent collection of the Musée de la Terrorism, scheduled to open in 2029.
In addition, starting Wednesday, the Paris Archives will present a previously unreleased exhibition of memorial items collected after the attacks and those received afterwards, and a concert by the Paris Chamber Orchestra will also be held on Wednesday at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.
Victim situation
Ten years later, one of the central questions after the attack is the situation of the victims, many of whom continue to suffer from psychological problems as a result of the damage they suffered, as Catherine Bertrand, one of the survivors of the Bataclan room and now vice-president of the French Victims of Terrorism Association, recently reported.
“Time will heal, but there are wounds that will never heal,” he said in an interview with French television station BFM TV last week. “For the past 10 years, we have mourned with victims, organizations and officials. Most of the time, we have felt completely alone,” he lamented, but the commemoration efforts will bring the situation back into the spotlight.
On Sunday, the association, together with 13 universities, called for commemorative events to be held along two routes, 7 kilometers and 15 kilometers from the Stade de France and Place de la République. The route converges near the Hotel de Ville, surrounded by the aforementioned gardens of November 13th, which the association has designated as “a day of reunion, remembrance, and animation centered around the values of the Republic.”
In this regard, Abdeslam’s lawyer Olivia Ronen said in a statement to France Info Radio on Tuesday that Abdeslam himself is considering opening restorative justice avenues to compensate the victims of the November 13 attack. “Mr. Abdeslam wants to open the door for civil parties to begin the repair process,” he said.
“He is asking for access to education and apologized during the trial. He wants to explain the situation and perhaps talk about the trial,” he said, while stressing that there are already parties “who have made similar requests and are ready to contact him,” but so far no details have been released.
Ronen’s statement came after French authorities detained three people over the weekend, including Abdeslam’s former partner, Maeva B., on suspicion of giving them USB drives and planning attacks on French territory during Abdeslam’s stay in prison.
The woman, who prosecutors said showed “clear radicalization and jihadi enthusiasm,” was detained in connection with the handover of the memory stick that was illegally given to a prisoner at Vendants-le-Vieille prison in northern France. Two other people were also arrested in the case, a reminder of the threat posed by the activities of jihadist groups in France and other European countries.
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