During the first day of requisitions, which lasted about seven hours, the Advocates General were implacable against the 14 defendants present in the courtroom, rejecting point by point the explanations that they had been able to provide for clear customs during the nine-month hearing.

The indictment before the special assize court will end on Friday with the sentences claimed against Salah Abdeslam, the only member still alive of the commandos responsible for the death of 130 people in Paris and Saint-Denis, and his 19 co-accused, six of whom are tried in their absence.

Twelve defendants incur life imprisonment, seven others incur twenty years in prison and a final six years in prison.

Camille Hennetier, Nicolas Braconnay and Nicolas Le Bris sought during the first day to “reconstruct the puzzle” which led to the attacks of November 13, 2015. “Each of the accused played a role, in various capacities and in different ways”, thus affirmed Camille Hennetier.

The representatives of the Pnat, concerned with “the defense of the general interest and the manifestation of the truth” wish to bring out “a rigorous analysis of facts and actions”. This concern for accuracy led them to “choose to abandon certain insufficiently substantiated elements”. But, on the merits, they conceded nothing to the defendants.

Salah Abdeslam, who claimed during the trial to have voluntarily given up detonating his explosive belt (which was defective) in a bar in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, is not an “accomplice” but one of the “co-authors” of the attacks , said Camille Hennetier.

He didn’t just help, “he participated,” she said.

– “Answers in the box” –

The representatives of the prosecution also acknowledged that this trial had not shed all the light expected by the survivors and the relatives of the victims.

We will not know who chose the targets of the attacks and for what reasons, they lamented.

“All these questions torment us and these answers are in the box”, pointed out Camille Hennetier who must continue his indictment on Thursday.

But if there are still gray areas, the prosecution also has a lot of certainties. The attacks of November 13 were planned in Syria, prepared in Belgium and executed in France, recalled the Advocates General.

As early as November 2014, Oussama Atar, head of the Islamic State’s external operations cell (and one of the defendants, probably dead in Syria, tried in his absence), told his cousins ​​Ibrahim and Khaled El Bakraoui (two of the suicide bombers attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016, considered to be the chief logisticians of the attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis) to prepare a terrorist project in Europe, indicated Nicolas Braconnay.

And for the 33 identified members of the terrorist cell which prepared the attacks in the French and Belgian capitals, the common denominator was jihadist Islamism, he insisted.

He categorically rejected “the fable” put forward by some of the defendants who claimed to have joined Syria “for humanitarian reasons”. He notably quoted the words of the ex-girlfriend of one of the attackers of the Bataclan. “The humanitarian? It was a pretext. They went there to kill!”.

If France was targeted it is because it represents “an ideal of a secular university that the Islamists abhor”, he still estimated. Echoing the words of former President François Hollande, the Advocate General said: “We have been struck for what we are”.

The requisitions of the Pnat will be followed from Monday by the pleadings of the defense. The verdict is expected on June 29.