France marks 10 years since the 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130, honoring victims with memorials and a future terrorism museum
PARIS: France marks a decade next week since suffering its worst attack, with the only surviving attacker 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 the Islamic State group 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.
Several ceremonies are to mark 10 years since the attacks on Thursday, with President Emmanuel Macron expected to speak.
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 straddling Syria and Iraq.
‘Democracy always wins’
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.
US-backed forces in 2019 in eastern Syria defeated the last remnants of the IS proto-state that attracted French residents and inspired the Paris attacks.
Abdeslam remains behind bars, and France’s anti-terror unit said Saturday that three people were in custody as part of an investigation into a suspected terror threat linked to him.
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 in the aftermath, have been inscribed on commemorative plaques around Paris.
‘Extended family’
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 handed 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 who was also killed at the concert.
It also contains a black-board menu of La Belle Equipe riddled with bullet holes, still bearing the words “Happy Hour”.
The events of the terrible autumn evening have also been committed to memory in books and screenplays.
But 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 see other relatives — those she has come to call her “extended family”. – AFP
