V13: Chronicle of a Trial struggles to make sense of the 2015 Paris massacre
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On Friday November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terror attacks throughout Paris killed 130 people, most of them young people attending a rock concert. All but one of the perpetrators made use of explosive vests, putting them outside the reach of the justice system. The attacks themselves were largely bumbled: what could have been a mass slaughter at a stadium was foiled when the terrorists arrived late, and couldn’t get in. Another just walked off without hurting anyone, dumping his vest in a trash can.
When the case went to trial, French writer and critic Emmanuel Carrère spent five days a week for ten months sitting in a room that he repeatedly likens to a church, writing weekly columns that appeared in newspapers throughout Europe before they were assembled into V13: Chronicle of a Trial. Even when little was happening at the trial, he still had to fill the space [in the daily print paper game, we called this the newshole—EB], leading to reporting on diversions around the courthouse, including an unexpected cameo from Carlos the Jackal, pointlessly appealing one of his several overlapping sentences.
Given that nine of the ten attackers were dead, the trial mostly concerns what Carrère refers to as the “second stringers,” those who abetted the attacks, without directly taking part. Coming from a ghettoized suburb of Brussels, the attackers saw themselves as taking revenge on France for its part in the bombing of Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq. Most had previously been petty criminals, so when they got calls asking for a ride, or for fake IDs, they might have reasonably assumed that they were helping them with a robbery or a drug deal. The fact that it turned out to be a terrorist attack moves their actions from a minor charge to a crime that could land them decades in prison.
Carrère has a lot of sympathy for some of these defendants, who claim to have had no idea what their friends were up to: it’s hard not to feel bad for someone whose offense seems to have been driving for hours to pick up a friend who said that he was in trouble. Of course, as prosecutors note, when they did find out what they had been a part of, they didn’t turn anyone in, citing the rule against snitching.
Philosophical questions about culpability are centered in Carrère’s book, as the only real mysteries are basically meaningless (why were the attackers watching the 1953 comedy “The Virtuous Scoundrel” the night before?) or unsolvable: the man who is spared by the gunmen, and brought up on stage; Salah Abdeslam, the attacker who walked away. As the only surviving attacker, Abdeslam is a focus of the trial: did he lose his nerve? Did the vest malfunction? Did he decide to not go through with it? Does it matter?
He claims that he was moved by the sight of young people around him enjoying their lives, and didn’t want to hurt them. Does that warrant giving him a lesser sentence? Certainly, if the other attackers had survived, Abdeslam would be the least culpable of them, but should he therefore be sentenced to less than the maximum?
As the book moves chronologically through the process of the nine-month-long trial, it raises questions about how we should be talking about these crimes. Carrère vividly recounts the testimony of survivors at first, but when a dozen or more are testifying every day for weeks on end, it necessarily gets repetitive. The stories of the defendants are often more engaging: full of inconsistencies, leading to speculation about what was really happening, even though the answer often seems to be that they were not very smart, and often high.
In effect, the early months of the trial are an exercise in the radical centering of victims and shows the limits of that approach, especially in mass casualty events. This isn’t to say that a completely victim centered approach can’t work – Underground, Haruki Murakami’s book on the victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway attacks is a master class in it – but the structure of the trial pushes back against it.
One benefit of true crime narratives set abroad is the comparative lens they bring to the subject. Thanks to television and movies, people around the world know how US trials work, but the logistics of French trials – especially terror trials, which have unique rules – can be surprising. Witnesses are questioned initially not by attorneys, but rather by a tribunal of judges, who are supposed to establish the facts of the case. Further questioning comes from attorneys from both sides, but also lawyers representing the victims and their families – lots of them, in a sprawling case like this.
The jury, in a terrorism trial, is comprised not of peers of the defendants, but of other judges. Plea bargaining isn’t a thing, but since both defendants and prosecutors can appeal a sentence, there’s the implied threat that an appeal could lead to a harsher sentence than the one initially handed down. The harshest sentence possible is life without the possibility of parole – which has only been handed down a handful of times and isn’t a given even in a terror trial. Other aspects are sadly familiar: preferences in rap music as a sign of guilt, the tedious recounting of cell phone tracking data that might not prove anything, the struggle of poor defendants who have to somehow survive while caught up in the justice system.
The trial itself is framed less as a criminal procedure than as a political statement, a way for the state to performatively demonstrate the rule of law in contrast to the barbarism of the terrorists. In effect, it’s the French system that’s on trial, rather than the defendants. The trial is supposed to, as Carrère says, work as a “machine for creating community ties and a sense of identity,” but it mostly seems to create a sense of community among the participants from all sides, who celebrate together when it’s over.
Abdeslam challenges the court to understand his anger, saying that their actions cannot be understood outside of the broader context. Carrère tries to do so, and the trial tracks Abdeslam’s radicalization, but I don’t think anyone really feels seen and understood. Both sides want something more like a truth and reconciliation committee, and while some individuals find resolution on their own, that goal seems to be just fundamentally incompatible with a criminal proceeding.
As a thoughtful, in-depth account of a trial trying to grapple with the incomprehensible, the publishers of V13 compared it to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, but this is less the banality of evil than the banality of justice. Though the book’s presentation never is, trials, even spectacular ones, are often dull. We want them to deliver catharsis, closure, to end with a quip from Jack McCoy and a fade to black, but Carrère is skeptical about whether any trial can be more than an exercise in the display of political power.