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As he prepares to testify in the marathon trial over the November 13, 2015, Paris terrorist attacks, Bataclan survivor David Fritz Goeppinger talked to FRANCE 24 about what he went through on that unspeakable night and how he anticipates facing the accused as a witness.
When asked how he has felt since the biggest trial in modern French history opened on September 8, Goeppinger expressed a sense of relief: “I actually thought it would be worse,” the 29-year-old said on the telephone.
Goeppinger went to a concert by US hard rock band Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris on November 13, 2015, and found himself taken hostage – along with 10 other people – by two Islamic State (IS) group terrorists who had stormed the venue along with another jihadist gunman, killing 90 people. Goeppinger was eventually released thanks to an operation by the French police’s Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI).
IS group jihadists killed another 40 people in and near Paris on November 13, 2015, in co-ordinated attacks on restaurants, bars and the Stade de France football stadium just outside the city.
For Goeppinger, there is a kind of ritual to each week of the trial. When he goes to watch it unfold at the Palais de Justice in central Paris, he finds a “core group” of people he has come to know, including other survivors of the attacks, relatives of people killed and leaders of civil society groups.
“It’s a kind of fraternity; we’re there for each other,” Goeppinger said, while underlining the importance of this support among the community of people who experienced the November 13 attacks and who “break down from time to time”.
He himself needed to take a step back from the trial “once or twice” so he could process what was going…
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Source : france24
