V13

France’s “trial of the century.”

On November 13, 2015, Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people and wounded nearly 500 others in shootings and suicide bombings across Paris. Nine of the militants were killed in the attacks on “V13”—Friday (vendredi) the 13th. The trial of 20 men accused of involvement in the attacks began in September 2021 and lasted nine months. There to write about it was journalist and novelist Carrère, author of 97,196 Words: Essays and The Adversary: A True Story of a Monstrous Deception. Carrère is no legal specialist, but he tells an engrossing story of justice à la française; the book originally appeared as columns in the French magazine L’Obs. Readers will quickly notice that French trials are different. Unlike America’s “adversarial” legal system, the “inquisitorial” French system lacks dramatic courtroom confrontations. Instead, defense and prosecution, with the active participation of the judge, examine the facts of a case. Perhaps most startling, the crime’s victims (and their lawyers) are present and participate. This allows Carrère to describe—perhaps at more length than some readers would prefer—horrific experiences of those who were caught in the attacks or who discovered that someone they loved had been killed. Except for one defendant (whose explosive belt may have been defective), the others varied from jihadist fellow travelers to associates who may or may not have been entirely innocent. Readers learn details of how the attacks were planned (very sloppily), how they were carried out (with much confusion), and how the police reacted (with incompetence before the attacks and overreaction afterward). Mostly, Carrère offers a penetrating account of how France dealt with a mass murder. The trial was grueling, but it was necessary. As public prosecutor Camille Hennetier says of the verdict in her closing remarks: “It will not heal the wounds, be they visible or invisible. It will not bring the dead back to life. But it can at least reassure the living that here law and justice have the last word.”

An invaluable look into another nation’s response to terrorism.