AT.TENTAT DU BATACLAN : TÉMOIGNAGES INÉDITS DE SURVIVANTS QUI ONT PARLÉ AVEC LES TERR0RISTES

Today's show is exceptional, on November 13th 2015, during the 10 years of the Bataclan.

Do you remember their faces?

The face, yeah, I clearly printed it... with Vita Metternam. He said, don't worry, I won't kill you. And I found it so surreal...

Don't worry, I won't kill you?

Yeah.

And I dive, and the luck I had was that he had the gun down,

so the time he but the girl next to me was hit. You didn't want to jump on them? I killed them in my dreams a lot of times. You have to rip off their throat, you have to kill their eyes,

before they touch the ground, they're dead.

Hello everyone and welcome to Legends. An exceptional show today, on November 13, 2015, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Bataclan and its attacks that hit the city of Paris and simultaneously in several places, at the Stade de France, on the terraces and at the Bataclan during a concert of the band Eagle of Death Metal. We will have 5 people who will come and tell their story, how they experienced this terrorist attack. We will have people who were at the concert, who went to attend the concert. We will also have, you will see later, the former boss of the RAID,

who was there, from 2013 to 2017, and we will also have the chief doctor of the RAID. They will all tell how they lived their day and their evening at the Bataclan. We will start with Benjamin. You will see Benjamin, who never spoke in 10 years,

who lived completely crazy things that night. He found himself face to face with the terrorists. He even spoke to the terrorists who shot him. He managed not to get shot by miracle. He will tell us how he found himself hidden in the Bataclan until the last moment. A lot of things happened to him. It's an exceptional testimony.

I thank you in advance for speaking today. We will also have Stephanie. Stephanie experienced something else. She experienced her journey inside the Bataclan. She went to speak in court and she was able to speak to Salah Abdeslam. She will tell us what they said to each other in off. We will end with Arthur, who is the president of the Life for Paris association,

which today brings together all the victims of the Bataclan. He will tell us what he experienced and it was him who who made the band Eagle of Death Metal escape from the shadows. Let's go for a special Bataclan show. Don't hesitate to subscribe in 2 seconds if you want to comment the show and ring the bell.

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Thank you for making Legends the first podcast in France. Let's go now on Legends. Benjamin is with us on the set. Welcome Benjamin. Hi. Benjamin, you are a screenwriter, right? Yes.

And you were on the set on November 13th, 2015, at the Bataclan, at the concert, precisely. We decided to make a complete show on this, with different speakers, you will see, who will come as the show progresses, to tell, in their own way, what they have experienced during this day. These few days, for some, you will see, some have lived several complicated days, some several months, even several years, we'll talk about that later, but the psychological footprint of what remains after,

just to understand. So you're a screenwriter, you're making a film on the subject, we'll come back to that later, because you never really told a story in interviews,

I've never seen it in France.

No, I did it in Denmark. So if you speak Danish, there's a way to... But it was also one of the reasons I accepted to do it, it would be in Danish only. And I don't speak Danish either, but... I did the interview in English and it stayed there in a newspaper.

Why didn't you tell it to him? We're 10 years old today.

Because I didn't see the interest 100% there are plenty many other stories It's useless to add one on top of all that The very first reason was for security reasons I had received threats after... It's crazy

Yeah, after the attack So I didn't believe it but my relatives were very worried So I didn't want to worry anyone or take any risk Because you're making a movie about it today, so you're going to tell us something.

We'll talk about it later, but you're going to tell us your story in this film.

My story is that of my partner, our meeting, and all the good things that... Well, it's hard to hear them, but all the good things that came out of it. Horror, basically, showing that beyond horror,

he can really come out can be really beautiful things.

You weren't supposed to be there that night. It was a metal concert. Hard rock.

Hard rock.

Are you a fan of the band? Yes, I'm a fan.

Eagle of Death Metal. I saw them in June, a few months before. I wasn't in France, but I came to France to celebrate my mother's birthday, to surprise her. And on the day of the concert, a friend I had made a group with gave me his place as a birthday gift in late, and here it is, a very nice gift. So I arrived during the first part, but I arrived late. Because it's your mother's birthday, so you came back to France at that time.

She was born on the 15th, so I came a few days earlier.

Does he give you a concert ticket? Does he give you one to go with him or one because he only has one?

No, he gives me his and in fact the friend... I had made a group for two friends, so the two friends were supposed to go, he can't go, so he gave me his place as a birthday present. It's late, but... So I got his place and I joined my friend in front of the Bataclan during the first part. And so you leave just with two?

You leave, as you said, with two friends, so you leave just with two. I'm just with my friend, in fact, with my friend Fat Fatim. A girl? A girlfriend? Yes, and we meet there. We arrive during the first part, so the concert is very packed.

You arrive a bit late, because the concert has just started,

but the first part, you're not in advance.

Yes, because I had the place late, and I was supposed to drink, for the record, I was supposed to drink with one of my best friends who lives above the Carillon at the Carillon, so I was a real black cat that night. The Carillon is a restaurant where there were people executed on the sidewalk.

Yes, just before the attack on the Bataclan, and we had to go drink, so I canceled to come to the Bataclan. My friend who lives above the Carillon told me, it's shooting down from my house, be I told him to stay in the Bataclan, and then it was shooting in front of the Bataclan, so I told him to stay in there, without knowing what was really happening.

So you arrive, first part,

you're with your friend who's a fan of the band. Yeah, I showed her the band, she had already seen them once, she liked them a lot, and we're not far from the stage. Yes, I'm far from the stage, but it's not a very big room. You're at the entrance. Yes, I'm 3 meters from the entrance, roughly. I'm on the right of the bar.

The big advantage is that we can easily go and do refills and go back to the bar. Recharge the guys. Sorry, I have anglicisms. Basically, we can easily recharge them. We sympathized with some guys right next to us. It's pretty weird, people will say it's really music, but we sympathized with people during the first part,

before the concert started, with two guys, talking about the band, the album, the cover, and stuff like that. We even drank beers, which never happened to me at other concerts, so it's pretty funny.

You made friends with people?

Yeah, just before the concert. You sympathized with people in a concert Yeah, we were in the same place, we were joking and when someone heard the joke, we were laughing at each other and alcohol helped us, I think we started It's a very festive band It's joyful

Yeah, there are a lot of people, as many women as men there are young people, there are old people

people come to party So what's going on? First part, everything's fine? You make friends?

We drink, everything is fine, we laugh And to get to the point, the concert starts Great concert, it's not the emotion that makes it, it's a live band that is really great And they are great musicians, they are there to have fun, they are showmen I have videos, the atmosphere is crazy, people are dancing everywhere, even in the back. Even in the back, the more we are in the back, we can imagine that people in the pit, it jumps, it's a bit scary. Even where I was in the back, really, at the bar, people were jumping, screaming, it was...

It's not hysterical, but it was really a great atmosphere.

It's part of the bands that you have to see on stage. The concert starts, everything is fine, you party, everyone dances, it's joyful, it's festive. The terrorist attack will be at 9.45 p.m. that night. Three terrorists will enter the Bataclan. Where are you, in relation to the scene, to the Bataclan? There is the door at the back, there is the bar, then there is the scene with the artists and people in the middle, of course.

Where are you at this moment? To try to situate a little, I'm at the back of the room, so I'm near the bar, I have the entrance behind me a few meters away, 3-4 meters, and the stage is far ahead, but again, it's not a very big room, so it's not very embarrassing.

And when the first shots are heard, I go back straight away because I'm attracted by the noise. I can't see the three guys, but I can see at least two people. So you see the weapons? Yes, I see the silhouettes. Some of them are holding a guitar.

I can see them, they were 3 or 4 meters away. Very quickly, people between them and me, fall like the wheat that lies with the wind in a field. It's a kind of giant domino, people fall on each other,

so I fall on it, and I'm on the ground, and basically... Does it make you fall too?

Yeah, it's really a domino movement, so everyone falls, and I fall on it, and the people who haven't been shot, who are still alive, run in the opposite direction of the shots and escape to the emergency exit, which is on the left, at the bottom left of the room. I get trampled, it's quite ridiculous,

but I really thought of the Lion King, I thought of Simba's father who gets trampled by the Gnu's herd. For a second, I really saw shoes walking on my face while I was lying on the ground. And the moment it stops, it's when one of the shooters, I didn't name them because I don't like to make them even more eternal than they are,

but basically he shoots above me and I try to get up, but I slip on the alcohol, on the blood, everything that is on the ground. I'm quite cartesian, but it's really all in the first 2-3 seconds. But for me, time really stops. It's the first and only time in my life I've had an extracorporeal experience.

So I'm not at all connected to religions or anything.

We can make a special show about it, about the experiences of imminent death, it's something else, but it's when you get out of your body.

I had saw myself, as if I were a camera, I was filming myself. The third person. Yeah, and I saw my face in a cold face, the cry of a munch, really, the face... Your name?

The cry of a munch, I don't know if you're the painter. Ah yes, yes. That's it, that's my myself, the sound comes back, it starts again and there it bursts

and so I try to get up as I can and... So you're on the ground and everyone came out at that moment?

Well no, people keep running, on the one hand there are those who lie in the pit and then there are all the people who were between them and me who are not touched by the bursts we ran towards the exit in my back actually. And you find yourself lying down? I'm not lying down, I'm on my butt, trying to get up. And when I manage to get up, I tell myself that if I follow these people who escape to the emergency exit,

I'm going to get shot in the back, because it's a kind of strangling goulot. So my first reflex is to tell myself that I have to get out of the firing line.

So basically, just after the bar, there's a door, There is a staircase that goes up to the floor to reach the balcony.

With access to the lodges.

Yes, exactly. So I go up this staircase and I see that I am not followed by my friend. You lose your friend. Yes, in the hustle and bustle of the beginning. So I go down to see if I can find her. I go down the steps, I go down to the bar area.

And there I see a gap in front of me that bursts just at the door frame. So I tell myself, not seeing it, and not being able to do much...

Did you still think about getting it?

Yeah, because I didn't want to give it up. But it was in the middle of chaos, I couldn't do anything. You didn't even know if you were not touched from the start? No, no, I was really worried. At first I didn't understand anything. I didn't see anything. So I go up and I tell myself that if I can get to the balcony,

they will go up after a month. So I try to find a solution. And I take a small corridor on the left, really narrow, which leads to the toilets. In a kind of small corridor,

a bag ass, that I didn't know.

When you were sitting, you said, when you were preparing for a show, you said, you had the effect of a sideration, you were completely normal, your brain was... Three seconds before, you were at a concert, you know, of music.

You get bored very quickly. And you say, you see the terrorist in front of you.

I see silhouettes, I don't see all three, I see at least two, I see there are several. And they shoot above you, you're sitting, you see the weapons. Well, actually, I'm over-elevated, I'm on a few steps, so I dominate them a bit, and I see them going towards the pit, they don't even need to aim, they're facing hundreds of people, so they shoot in the face, they just sweep. And the weird memory I have is that one of them looked pretty skinny and I felt like he was struggling with the recoil of the weapon

I thought about it later in the evening and I thought that the guy looked surprised by the power of the weapon I thought that the guy looked really skinny and skinny It's stupid but that's what I thought at the time As if he hadn't even tried it before I imagine he trained but I really feel like he's suffering from it more than anything else. And he just bursts without aiming, he doesn't need to aim anyway. Do you remember their faces?

So no, I only see silhouettes, but I crossed them later in the evening, and I clearly printed their faces. Ad vitam aeternum. You go upstairs, you think about going to get your friend. What's his name?

Fatim.

Fatim? You can't say your friend all the time. So you go to get Fatim, you see, you say, in the door, a cyclops that is going down, do you understand that it's going to go up?

No, but I understand that I can't access the area anymore and that if I stay there, I'm going to get shot at.

Because there is no emergency exit up there. No, no, no, it's the balcony. You try to escape, you just try to escape the area where you're going to be shot at, basically. And you don't think, I'm going to run to the rescue, you just try to be as far away as possible.

Instantaneously.

Yeah, yeah. And so, there are three weapons shooting at the same time. I didn't see all three, I'm not going to lie, but I know it's going to blow up, so I'm not going to ask myself the question of saying, I'm going the speedway. Were you alone up there? Did you have the idea to go left? No, we were several, but it's the cavalcade. Everyone is the total chaos. I arrive in this small room,

in a small, tiny toilet. There are already people in there, several girls and a boy, completely panicked, who, as you said earlier, think they're firecrackers.

I tell them right away, they're not. I told them right away that it was a small group of girls, I discovered them later, next to me in the same area where I was, but they didn't see anything, they just heard. But they still went to the bathroom just in case? They escaped like me, except that they arrived before me in the bathroom.

But they hadn't seen any weapons yet? They had just heard, and I explained to them that they were guys with AKs and they were killing everyone. So they weren't shooting at all. I don't know if they were in denial or in shock or whatever, but it was so surreal. So I explained to them what was happening and they said no. And as more people came, we were six in the end.

And pretty quickly I got a call on my phone and it was my friend Fatime who managed to escape. She managed to escape? I'll find out later, but she left. She took some time to understand what was going on, but she wasn't hit. She just crawled during the shots

and she came out of the emergency exit that I should have taken, but I didn't, because I thought I would have been shot in the back. So she managed to escape, I hear her on the phone, running, asking me where I am, and I tell her I'm still inside.

I'm really relieved to know she's alive, but I tell myself that I'm screwed, that I'm in, and I'm mad, because I know the concert hall by heart. You knew the battle? I had been there, maybe not 50 times, but I had been there a lot. And so I was telling myself, I repeat myself in a loop, you're stupid, why did you take the left, why did you take the left,

you're going to die because you took the left. And really, the first minutes, it's just that.

You tell yourself you're going to die? Yes, I'm convinced of that. I'm quite logical as a person, I didn't make the wrong choice. But I'm thinking, you're on the left, it's only a matter of time.

They'll find you and kill you.

And you say you arrive in the toilets, so on the balcony.

The toilet is on the first floor, in corridors leading to the balcony. It's a door to access the toilet, but you arrive, there's a sink, and then there's a tiny toilet in there. So there's no lock on that door. So I arrive, I push it suddenly, and I discover them completely panicked.

I take care of my phone, and then people come, there are gunshots in the distance, there are screams. Do you still hear yourself? Yes, it seems endless, but yes, it's... It's loud, there are screams, there is silence, but at the beginning the shots are really very sustained. And I receive a text from my mother who tells me that there is an attack on Paris.

And I say, yeah, I know, they're behind the door, they're not very far away. And her first thought is to tell me, stop making jokes, because I often make shitty jokes. And so she explains to me that I should not make jokes. I said, no, I'm serious, I'm at the Bataclan, and it's shooting at the Bataclan, and I don't want to send a goodbye message, even if I'm sure I'm doomed, I don't want to get drunk, I don't want to waste time sending a message. I just say, happy birthday, minus two, just in case, I love you, and I hang up. You say happy birthday, because it's two? Yes, it's a text message. I send him the message and then I say to myself,

I have to take care of the door, so I hang up the phone and that's it.

And you don't turn on your phone right away?

No, no. You put it in the bathroom and you lock yourself in the bathroom? No, I block the door with the other boy who's with me, with my foot and my hand. I just block the wrist with all my strength and with my foot I get behind the other guy. It's really tiny. So we're one on top of the other.

And yeah, at first it's pretty intense. How many are you?

You're six?

Six, including me.

But if he shoots through the door,

you're just behind him?

Of course, I know, but if it comes later, you just tell yourself, I'm here, what do I do? And basically, you try to... You have to think about all the solutions. And basically, in real life, 10 minutes, but for me, it seemed like more like half an hour or an hour, it was very, very long. And there's a calmness in terms of shooting, we don't hear any more shots for a while, but for a few seconds. So I'm with a girl, one of the girls I was with, we're having a concert, we're thinking it's time to leave,

because if they find us, they'll kill us. So we go out... You go out? Yeah, we go out through this little corridor, which leads to the main corridor, which gives access to the different doors.

But you go out of the toilets, you have to go slowly with the door, you know, you pass the head. No, no, no, I just thought we had to go fast. And so we're actually tracking a little bit anyway. And you're not telling yourself that you're going to run into them? I'm not telling myself, but I'm just thinking, you're spoiling a little bit, but yeah. Basically, I get to the main corridor and I run into two terrorists.

And in fact, the shooting stopped was killed by the boss of the BAC in Paris, who was also heroic, who came in with just a gun and his driver, and they shot him down. The terrorist exploded, they don't know if he was shot or if he was shot. So there are only two left and you find yourself facing...

No, he's still alive.

He's still alive?

He's still alive, he just wants to get on the balcony to have a vision, to dominate the space. I don't know about that, I'm just following them when I get to the corridor. And the luck I have...

So you're two at the moment, with a girl and a boy.

There's the girl who follows me and the boy, from memory. I see I'm being followed, but I thought everyone was following me. But I don't think so, I don't think I'm being followed by everyone. And I'll hanging out with them for years when they were going to push the doors to get to the balcony and the only chance I had was that they were behind me so we got in the hallway in front of them and one of them turned around

and told me, the most calmly in the world I still have it in my head, he told me don't worry, I'm not going to kill you don't worry, I'm not going to kill you? I find it so surreal that I laugh I said, ok, I'm in. I dove in, and I was lucky, he had his gun down, so the time he raised his AK...

He had a second enemy.

Not even, not even. The time he raised his AK and made a fire, I had time to dive in from the corridor I was coming from, and avoid the shots, but the girl next to me, she was hit, so I was running as fast as I could...

Back to the end of the hallway, I lock myself in the bathroom, and a few seconds later, there's a drum at the door. I don't know who it is, I don't know if it's the girl, I don't know if it's the girl, the terrorist, or if... Oh yeah, if they tell her, 10 minutes before the door. We don't know, and in doubt, I tell myself, I ended up opening it and it's her all alone, relieved, but it's still hot.

And she is in shock, she keeps repeating.

She was hit, you say?

Yes, she was hit at the level of the large pectoral, the shoulder. Between the breast and the shoulder? Yes, for people to get the idea, it's not 9mm. An impact of Kalash almost filled the hole of the size of my hand. It's really ultra. She is completely...

I don't remember how, but she barely held her arm. It's really a serious injury. And so she arrives completely panicked, in shock, and she keeps repeating, they said she wouldn't shoot, she said she wouldn't shoot, she collapses on the ground, and in two seconds, the floor is covered in blood,

because she is really serious. So I tell myself, at first I wait, I think they will arrive, but they don't arrive right away. I tell myself that we have only one chance. I didn't think I would spot any signs of toilets on the door. So I tell myself that if I manage to isolate myself completely, they will think it's a technical building if I block the door. So first I try to smash the fake ceiling to try to get through. Is there anyone else who have done it, by the way?

You've had the same idea. You've passed through the ceiling, as we have here, the fake ceiling, you've passed through it. I smashed that, but I saw that above there was a concrete slab, so it was screwed. And then... There's no window, of course.

No, no, no.

Otherwise, I guess we were going to, in quotation marks, stand in the right place. So I broke the neon lights, I tore them off, I broke them. You broke the neon lights by hand? Yeah, so it cost me beautiful cuts in my hands, but nothing serious. But I had pieces of glass like that, with adrenaline, I didn't feel anything. But I felt it at the same time. With adrenaline you didn't feel anything? I try to pull the light out of the door pointing to the exit the exit of the rescue

Yes, the little light above the doors Yes, because it makes light and what is ironic is that it points to them I look at it and I think it's very stupid So there is this sign, the exit of the rescue

pointing to the terrorists and I try to pull it out

but it doesn't make much light but it was just to isolate us completely. In the dark, it makes a little light, it's on purpose, by the way.

And so... And there you don't hear the shots anymore. Oh yes, it keeps shooting, but in the room, I don't know if they are at 10 meters or 3 meters. With the echo, we don't hear anything, we hear the screams, we hear the silence, it's super there were people in the rooms next door. We didn't know who was where, we didn't know if it was a terrorist or if it was someone else hiding.

Did you hear the first kamikaze that got hit and exploded?

We heard a big explosion but we didn't make any connection. We thought they had grenades or something like that, we didn't think at all. I didn't even see the explosive jackets, I had just seen the Kalashnikovs, but I hadn't in the dark with the guy, we block the door. And for the record, as you explained earlier, I'm sitting on the heel and I block the door with my hand and my foot,

trying not to be in front of the door, by making such a big noise behind the door.

In what position do you have to be to block a door from the inside?

As I was, so really... Do you lean? You had a door from the inside. Well, as I was. You're lying down? No, no, I'm sitting on a heel, a straight leg, to be as far as possible from the door's axis. And in front of the door, next to the wall, there's the second guy with me. And I tell myself, well, he's screwed, he's in front of the door, and he's putting his two feet against the door to die, but we can't do much anyway. And so time goes by... The girl who was with you, that you didn't know,

who was hit on the shoulder, you say she lost a lot of blood, but is she conscious? Yes, she is conscious, we try to calm her down, her best friend is with us, so we are in the dark, it's complicated, I try to put pressure on the crowd. We try to make as little noise as possible because we hear the terrorists talking,

but we don't understand what they're saying.

You hear them?

Yeah, we hear them basically clamoring about Syria, about the president, about the Lord, all that. But we don't understand in a very distinct way what they're saying. We just hear screams. And what they can scream more and more but it's a bit diffuse. And the girl who was touched, she had to put blood on the floor, so they could maybe understand.

I think the luck I had was that there were so many other potential victims in the main room, that they didn't need to follow her and come running after us in the corridors. So there was no need to run after them in the corridors.

And the Bataclan is an old room, so there are lots of small corridors, lots of small doors everywhere. Which was hell for the BRI and the RAID afterwards. Because in every little corner, there were people hiding.

And terrorists could hide in every corner too. And that was their big fear. That's why they really struggled in the end. And so you're going to hold the door, the girl doesn't lose her consciousness, she will use the door to talk. No, we try to keep her calm, but it's very complicated because she really makes more and more noise and the least noise we make, we hear it, but as if it were with a loudspeaker, because sometimes there is absolute silence, all we hear is really nothing.

So it's super anxious, so we try to whisper as much as we can to communicate with each other, to make as little noise as possible. And the thing is a bit hard, I wanted to do it after the fight, but I understood that it was what I had to do after the fight. So I motivate the guy, I explain to him that when they're going to arrive, I know we're dead anyway, him and me, it's almost 100%.

And I tell him that when they arrive, we have to kill him. But we shouldn't punch him, kick him, it's a bit gross, but we have to rip his throat, we have to kill his eyes, before he touches the ground, he has to be dead. And I think if we kill one, with a little bit of blood, maybe the other one will kill us, but it could scare him.

And we can save maybe 2-3 people with us, who are deep in the room. That's the speech I had with him. You were thinking about how to kill him? Yeah, but my trauma is not so much what I read about it, even if it was very hard, it's more what I felt capable of doing and what I thought I would do for hours to the guy, for two hours, how I was going to kill him, knowing that I was going to die.

You went in a reptilian way, in defense.

Yeah, but it wasn't... Is it normal to go through... I don't know if it's normal... No, no, no, but... Yes, but on the other hand, it's still super hard. All the nightmares I've had, in large part, it's me doing things to them that are a little violent, to terrorists. For years. For years you mean?

Yes, I still have nightmares, much less frequently, but when I'm very tired or very stressed, it can come back, yes.

But you have an oral discussion with the boy? Yeah. With you, you say, I'm going to catch him.

No, no, I'm just saying, basically, we shouldn't hit him, we should really kill him as soon as possible. We have to be effective. It's a bit gore, but it's...

No, no, it's not gore, you saw what you lived, you saw what you saw too. It's logical.

And so tells you... He's anxious but he's in shock. He's on his phone and he lets himself be carried away by the thing because he's completely... he communicates with his relatives. I'm not on my phone because I want to keep the door open. You have to be focused. I want to be super aware of every second, of every noise.

And I explain to the girls that they have to stay as quiet as possible. And basically, the idea is that even if they come and pull the door, maybe our corpses could block the door, that they have to stay quiet. So it's not crazy as an idea,

but I'm really trying to tell them that the key to everything is to stay quiet. You really have to go through a survival mode, it changes completely.

We are in a bubble, we are completely cut out of time. I feel like I spent 8 hours there, we spent 2 hours, I feel like I spent 8 hours there.

2 hours you spent?

Yeah.

That's a lot.

It's very, very long.

Especially when you don't know if you're going to die in 30 seconds or not.

Yeah, actually, clearly what you're saying is that you don't want to... I was clearly saying to myself, I don't want to Yes, at first, yes, and then after a while you just have the silence, which is not necessarily better. You understand what happened. Yeah, no, it was cool. So you want to die, but just die quickly.

And you think that if you can take one with you... It would be better.

Yeah.

There you go.

Wow.

But you're sure you're going to die. Don't you turn your phone back on? I turn it back on a little later, basically saying to myself that I can't call the police, that I have to stay silent, I have to keep the door open. And basically I send a message on social media, on my Facebook page. On Facebook, yeah. And basically it's a private page, but I tell myself that my friends

will share it and will be able to warn the police. So I doubt that the police are aware of what's going on. I'm not at all aware of the other attacks in Paris, but I know what's going on in Bataclan, it's so huge that they must have heard about it. I don't have time to wait in line with 50 other people, so I'm doing this post by saying,

just by saying that it's not a takeover that kills everyone,

that we have to give the assault sooner and that I have a serious injury with me. You call for help. Yeah, yeah. Basically, go ahead. Do you remember the Facebook post?

Yeah.

That you wrote?

Yeah, of course. You want me to read it again, right? I can read it. Yeah, you can read it.

It's precious. I'm still at Bataclan, period. First floor, period. Serious injury, period.

They attack as fast as they can. and you post. Seriously injured and them. Because I don't talk about myself, I talk about the girl. Which sometimes led to confusion. Yes, injured and them. Yes, I talk about the girl. Because I was a bit in a morse mode, I didn't have time to write, to tell my life,

I had to be efficient, so I wrote it.

I put my phone away too. And how did it react? I don't know. I'm in my bubble. So when you post, your mother doesn't try to call you? No, my phone is off. So when you post, it's on for two seconds? Yes, but I have 40,000 notifications.

You don't even look? No, it's not working, I don't have time. I tell myself I have to be on my phone for 20 seconds, and then I have to focus on the door. I don't have time to answer to anyone. So you don't know if there is the police, if there is any information, you have no information from outside. No, I have nothing from outside.

I'm in my... Once again, I think... You just know that your mother saw that there were attacks.

Yes, she wrote to me, I know. That's all. I know that they... After that, I knew that they had tried to call my family, the police. Because of the post office? Yeah, thanks to the post office. But my phone was cut off, so... So no, no, cut off.

They managed to quickly find the name and call...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the police.

A few minutes later, I don't know, it's complicated to imagine the exact time that passed, there's someone who comes knocking on the bathroom door. He comes scratching the door.

He comes scratching the door. He's scratching the door of the bathroom where you're all six,

with the girl badly injured.

There's a voice, a man, who tells us he's got a child. We hear him, we talk to a camera, but we never hear the voice of the person he's talking to. So we see the silhouette. With a child?

In a Hard Rock concert?

Did it seem weird to me was not hearing the person who was answering systematically. When we said to ourselves, if we hear a child's voice, there is no problem, we heard a guy talking and coming to the door, and very quickly, being threatening. Really? Yes, he absolutely wanted to come in and I was blocking the door.

So I speak in an ultrasonic way, I speak in a very, very low way, to the people I am, I ask them, do you hear the child, do you hear the guy? We are all convinced that he is a terrorist. You said that he pretended to be a terrorist. Yes, they did it, they pretended to be police officers in front of the lodges,

to try to open the door to people. I tell myself, I don't know, I don't care about the reason, but in fact, to see if there are people behind or not. And... What does he say at this point? He says, let me in. And very quickly it becomes, let me in, or anyway, when I come in, I'll kill you all. And so... And what about Bar?

Well, in fact, at first he is calm, but very quickly, as we do not respond, and he is faced with silence, well, it's a terrorist, but it's not. And the guys become threatening, like, when I go home, I'll kill you all. And you thought, it's a terrorist. Yes, we thought, we have our answer.

Then there is silence, we see only silhouettes, we think it's the terrorists. There are two silhouettes. We don't calculate, we just see there are at least two people behind, or several people. I don't know if there are three terrorists or two terrorists. I know there are several of them.

So we stay silent, we wait. I try to make sure that the girl who loses a lot of blood doesn't panic too much. I tell her that if she starts making a lot of noise because she really starts to feel bad, she lost... I mean, we literally bathe her in his blood. And basically, I explain to her that if she had a vital organ touched, she would have died a long time ago.

So she really has to stay silent, because if we make noise, we're all dead, actually. So it's screwed up. So it's tough, it's complicated. Do you know what he became?

The father of the family with his child?

I found him a year ago, on November 13th of November, a ceremony. We have a mutual friend. You have a mutual friend? Yes, yes. And basically, for the little story, when I went out,

at the end of the night, I spoil the end a bit, I went out of the Bataclan, I'm not dead, I'm not a ghost. And basically, I found him. So I found myself in a bar with a lot of other survivors. I met a guy who was complaining to people that people hadn't opened the door for him. He said, I was there and no one opened the door. I said, but man, it was me behind the door. We were convinced you were a terrorist.

And the guy was with his 10-year-old son in his arms, who was mutineer. I said, I'm sorry, we were convinced. We got lost. Then, in the chaos, we were moved. a year ago, and his son is now in his twenties. And he seems to be doing well. Apparently, we did a concert together. It was my first concert on November 13th too.

And it was quite emotional, it was a good moment, but it was special.

So you're going to find this father, who was really with his child. Fatim, your friend, with whom you were in the Bataclan, you lost him at some point, you didn't see him anymore, you sent a message, you see her again?

We called her. No, I don't see her at night, I only see her on Sundays, with all my friends, at the end of the afternoon, we're going to drink some beers, they want to see me in Chiranos,

to know how it's going, so we're there. And before she and I, we're going to gather in front of the Bataclan. We both come to see a little bit...

It creates a bond between you.

We were already very friends before, but we have an indefinite bond. You're still friends with her today? Yes, of course. She's an extraordinary girl. We'll just go back a little bit. But to understand the release, you said it's going to take 2 hours. The assault is going to happen. It's just before the assault. One of the terrorists explodes at the entrance,

he dies, and then the BRI assault is raided. How do you understand that it's the assault? What do you hear? How do you live it from the inside? How do you know it's that? They make me leave before the assault,

they tried to secure as many places as possible before the assault. So, the ABRI arrives in the small corridor where I am, and I can identify them right away, because I understand... There are many of them. No, but mostly, they describe the places.

They say, 5 steps to the right, we go down, and so on. So, they are very descriptive, they speak to the column, the guy in the head of the column speaks, and I understand that it is technical language, the police, I don't let myself be fooled. But for us, it's still a terrorist in front of the door. We don't know it's a guy. So he arrives and he sees the guy in the corner,

in the back of the bag, and so you have the policeman shouting at him, the operator of the BRI, shouting at him, under your shirt, under your shirt, and the guy just in panic, who answers him with a voice a little weird, They're going to shoot and I'm right in the line of fire. And if the BRD shoots, I'm really... The terrorist is behind the door there and... And the family man who said that...

Yeah, it was basically that he was stressed that at the last moment he was shot by the cops.

And...

You were afraid of that? You thought... I thought he was going to get shot in front of the door. In panic? I thought, either the... They were careful. Yes, yes. And either he gets shot in front of the door and we die in the last second,

and it's really a poor family man, and so he frees him, and very quickly afterwards, when he gets to our door, he tries to open it, and there are the girls with whom I am,

not that they panic, but they are so under the bed that they start screaming. So you have to imagine three people... Delivering. Delivering, exactly. And basically, I'm a little tough, but I tell them to shut up,

that there has to be only one voice, to be clear. I just think...

You stay lucid.

Yeah, I try. And I just tell them that they have to have a voice. If we are cacophon voice and there are 5 people talking, every door they open, they don't know if it's a terrorist, if it's a trap, if there's a bomb. So I think about that a bit, I tell myself, one voice, close it, I'm talking. You take the lead on the group.

Yeah, I wanted to at the time, but it was holding the door with a guy. We open the door and you see it's the police. They hit me with the shield, automatic weapons, flashlights. They yell at you, you have to lift your shirt, and I'm covered in blood. They don't know who's who. They take me out of the bathroom. What I didn't see was that in the back, there was a hidden policeman,

he was with his gun, and he waited for me to pass the door's latch to put the gun on the temple. In case there was an interrogation. Yeah, in case I was interrogated, in case I tried to steal anything. So, as I lift my shirt, I show that I don't have explosives or whatever. So he sees that everything is clean. He starts evacuating the people I was with. They make convoys, two by two.

And in the end, I end up with the injured girl, her friend and the guys from the bakery, from the Bak. They take you outside? No, no, because I propose to take the girl who is injured, I lift her up and he pisses me off a little. I met them afterwards, but suddenly he pisses me off a bit. I met him afterwards, but he pissed me off. He said, shut up, get out.

I said, ok, no problem. I didn't want to leave her there. I go down alone and I cross the columns that secure the whole floor. I go down again and I arrive in the main room

where it's unimaginable. It's a sea of corpses. It's piles of bodies everywhere. With the spotlights on, columns of red or birch, I don't know, with lasers pointing at the scene. And it's a surreal scene. I'm just trying not to walk on bodies.

I see people looking at me with begging eyes, begging for help or whatever. I don't know if I should take them with me. And people are seriously injured. And I don't know if I should take them with me. And some people were seriously injured, so I don't know if I should take one.

Were you accompanied by the police?

No, everyone was, but not me. I don't know why they abandoned me, I'll complain about it later. But there was noise between the hostage takers and the column in front of the door, and one of the guys from the Red I don't know what, is front of the door. And suddenly, one of the guys from the... I don't know what, he lays me on the floor. Ah, he still thinks you're a terrorist? No, no, no, but there's just noise, so they want to freeze the thing.

So he grabs me, he lowers me so I don't move. And in fact, he's sticking to girls who are against the BAR, who are dead. And I try not to look at them, I don't take horrible pictures. So I try to look at my feet as best I can and try not to walk on people when I go out. And I go out and then I find myself on the boulevard. And so I get searched 40 times. I'm facing cops who are panicked like crazy

because they see a flow of people coming out. And it's chaos outside. So I arrive at the Oberkampf and I find myself in the famous bar where I meet the famous family man with whom I talk for two seconds and we get evacuated because they turn the bar into a first aid hospital

and so we get kicked out.

You don't crack at any time? No. You were so into it. Yeah, and in fact, even when I'm there, I tell myself it's not over. So my phone, when I go out, I make a post to tell my relatives that I was alive, that I was a bastard, blah blah. To warn as many people as possible without having to call everyone.

And I told myself, keep the battery because it's not over, something can happen. And I told myself that there was potentially another attacker who could be hidden somewhere. It was really chaos everywhere. So I cut my phone off and then I wrote to my friend to tell her I was out, to my former colleague who was in Denmark, who wasn't in France, and who followed everything through the TV.

And then I hung up my phone and I followed the flow of the injured, survivors, and we ended up in a court, in Rüberkamp.

And the police took you to listen to you, to hear you?

We stayed for a very long time in this court. I think I was never so cold, even if it wasn't that cold, but I think with the shock I was really shaking.

In November it's not very hot in Paris either.

Yeah, but there apparently, for me it was minus 40, but apparently it was rather mild, so I'm shaking like crazy. And in fact, they empty the court as I go, and every time the police interview people to know what they saw and feeling a little more capable of staying, I tell myself that I can stay physically, I leave the race empty, I'm one of the last to leave

and so I get interviewed by a police officer who asks me what I saw, as I saw them up close, that I can identify them

talk about their equipment, they put me aside, they send me to a bar and then then send me to an antenna of the 36 to deposit my stuff.

You're going home, at what time? At 5am, more or less.

At 5am? What's going to happen? Are you going to find your mother?

I'm going to make a little joke. I'm going to write to her, because there's no subway, it's too early. I'm going to write to ask her to pick me up. The first thing I said to her was well done for the message, it made me laugh. She was ashamed, she told me not to tell anyone. So I told myself to tell her now, it would be perfect, she would be very happy.

I love her a lot. She was ashamed. She must have felt bad. But I prefer to laugh afterwards, and everything is fine. So I go home, as I didn't live in France, I lived with my mother, so I go to my mother's house. And I receive messages from my friends, I mean I had friends in Dubai, in China,

who had followed me live and they were already awake. And it was 6 am for me, but for them it was much later. And they tell me they saw my name on TV, they knew I was there, they saw my post. They saw your name on TV, they knew I was there. They saw your post on TV? Yes.

On their channel, the post they took from Facebook to film it.

Yes, without hiding my name.

There was a real name?

Yes, there was everything. Sometimes it was blurred, but sometimes it wasn't. So I was lucky to have... I have a lot of messages of support, but I also have threats from a lot of people, from Daesh sympathizers who were not... And threats, in addition to... Yeah, in the flow of messages I received, I received messages from guys saying, we're going to find you, we're going to kill you. I didn't believe it, but it did make my family and my ex-partner panic.

It gave you more threats? Yeah, well, beyond that, when you come home from that, you say, we all had this feeling, I think, they're going to find me, they're going to finish their job. So you move away from the windows, as soon as you see a silhouette outside, you get it. The next day, I slept,

I slept maybe half an hour, I think. And I woke up, I had two TV trucks parked in front of my mother's house, who were trying to interview me. Find the address with the Facebook post. my mother in France, and I think they found him like that. So they were parked in front of her house to try to have an interview.

And I had nothing to say, and I didn't want to show my face.

Because I didn't want to...

Yes, you didn't show your face for ten years. I had my phone working, journalists who had managed to get my phone, who called me and asked me for information on the terrorist. If they had a Belgian accent or something, I hadn't noticed, So you get harassed a lot, and then you try to get your life back, but it's a bit tough. You told me something pretty strong earlier in the office, when we met, you told me that there are people in my family with whom I haven't really talked about this subject,

and it's a way for me to tell people I love and explain to people I like without cracking up in front of them? It's not me who cracks up, it's not even them who cracks up, it's just that it's such a hard and dark subject and all that. I can tell it without too much emotion. What creates the emotion for me is to have my relatives telling me about their parties, that can touch me, but since the beginning I tell it a bit like a movie. It's so surreal, I think I distance myself from it. But everyone can react as they want. But there are people,

I think, who don't have the words, or don't want to dream, but without understanding

that it's part of us.

There were what we call the mythos of Bataclan. There were liars who made up stories, who pretended, there's even a series that was played by Laure Calamie, a comedian, where she plays the role of the myth of Bataclan,

who pretended to be someone who wasn't, basically. You even have people who made fake Facebook pages.

Yes, on the night of the attack, there was a guy who did... I don't know if it was the same, but he made a fake Facebook page taking my post back, but adding post to him afterwards... Which wasn't yours? No, not at all. I really did one for a while, to alert the police, basically, the rescue teams,

and one after to reassure my relatives by saying, I'm out, and that's it. And I did one, maybe just the next day, to say thank you to the Bay Area, they are the real heroes, like that, they did a whole thing, that's it, it's a miracle.

To thank the police?

Yeah, yeah, it's really, well, they, what happened, it was completely crazy. And that's all. So it's the evening,

we really did one in two days. I'm not a psychologist, but it's a crazy thing. The myth of the Bataclan, what was it for? You know the story better than us, but...

It was clearly for money, and I think there are many, that to have met one, and also to be part of a... To meet one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're not going to name him. But I actually participated in visits to the Bataclan while it was underlan during its renovation. We could go to the room for a year after the attack. I went to visit one of these guys who was very excited. At first I thought he was weird, but maybe he was damaged like us.

We all have different ways of reacting. But no, it was just a guy who was excited to see blood stains in the Bataclan, to see the impact of bullets in the passage to Melo, and to explain that it was the caliber, but really like a child who is on a battlefield in Verdun, but who is only 8 years old, except that he was not 8 years old and that there were people who were dead there.

How did you understand that it was a myth? My friends explained it to me later, I wanted to help him, just kidding. He was studying in the university, my brother was there. I wanted to contact him and tell him that my brother was a bit weird, but I think it was because he was damaged. I tried to help him, so I put them in a relationship, but he never answered my brother, and I found out later that it was a big lie.

He had never been there?

No, he said that his friends had died there, he didn't know anyone, and he himself wasn't there. He raised a lot of money. More than a lot of people like us. With the guaranteed fund, he quickly made a lot of requests and he had a lot of help.

I think he managed to be quite convincing and convincing enough to be able to get all his financial aid afterwards.

In 2021, in 2022, there was the Bataclan trial. You went to testify, you asked to testify. Why did you want to go? It's not easy to speak at a trial, especially for other people, it's very hard, to remember all that, you have pictures, things.

Why did you want to go?

So, I mainly needed to talk to them, there was a guy who was a survivor of the attack.

You mean Salah Abdeslam?

Yes. I didn't mention them. Sorry. what they had done, what I had thought of them, and to do it... to have it right in their eyes, actually. And then, above all, to explain to them how... Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it did me good. I started, let's say, I made a lot of friends because I was a little bit...

I told them, basically, what I started with, basically, my nightmares. I started my speaking session by explaining what I had done to them for years, and that it was weird to be faced with them. But very quickly I reflected on the fact that I was very happy that they are still alive and that they were going to spend the rest of their life in prison, apart from the wall, while I was going to have fun with my girlfriend, with

my friends, that I was going to make good dreams, that I was doing a professional conversion that made me very happy, and that they had failed. They killed more than 130 people, and it's dramatic. Many people lost their lives, but there are also many people who live even more intensely now, and every second they tell themselves

that they almost died. So it was important to tell them that they had failed.

Damn.

Didn't you want to jump on them in court?

I asked myself that question a lot of times.

Did you have nightmares?

The first day of the trial, when you're in front of them, you see them holding their heads up, I was not even 5 meters away, I was really in the front row.

Is there a window?

Yes, there is a window, but with spaces. Ah, you thought that... Yes, I saw't want to... I killed them in my dreams a lot of times and it's very good like that but I'm not a violent guy

and I didn't... just tell them that they were big cowards it was the most important thing for me to tell them and that they had a dirty religion they had dirty a lot of things and it was a shame I had grown up in the suburbs, with people from all backgrounds, all cultures. I'm not a believer, a practitioner or anything, but I think it's good in France to have a bit of diversity, to have people who have just turned things around as if it were impossible.

They won for that, but there are a lot of other people who are living very well and who will continue to party. It was hard for me to go back to the concerts, but I did a lot of them. I did two this week, I did two the week before, and I always had a thought about everything that happened to me, and I'm always ready, in case it could happen again. I'm not stressed.

You pay more attention when you're in a concert hall, even without being stressed, but you look where the emergency exit is, for example.

Do you naturally go to the emergency exit? I did a lot at the Bataclan. When I went back to the Bataclan for the concerts... Did you go back to the Bataclan for the concerts? I did 4 concerts at the Bataclan. And I spent 6 years at the Bataclan. The choice of the concert is very important. If it's too slow, you'll just cry for 2 hours, thinking about all the dead. What did you go to see in Bataclan? I went to see a band called Shame, a post-punk band from England,

which is really great, very festive and cool. I took a good 45 minutes to relax, 3 or 4 glasses of rum helped me too. And then the head of security, he became a friend, he's a nice guy, he made me feel super comfortable. Did you go back to see where you were?

Yeah, that's what you do, show... You went back to see where you were? Yes, I did that when I visited the Bataclan during the rehearsals. And of course I did it again during the concerts. Every time I go back there, I go to those toilets to... To pee? Yes, to pee, but even for... It's your pilgrimage.

Yes, yes. And even if I go alone, it's such a place... I saw myself dying here for two hours. So it's important. Did you get close to your mother? To not go far, like that, to tell yourself,

fuck, I could have gone there, I pay more attention.

I was already close to her. I was already close to her before. So no, no, no. It changed my relationship with friends, yeah. Who didn't necessarily always understand what had happened to me. Sometimes I was told that it would be different a short time later. But it was almost a month later.

As if I had a switch and I was on and off. It's okay. Depression is a little more complicated than that.

And we don't necessarily want to talk about it, it doesn't stay inside. Have you had PTSD? It can materialize in many different ways. It's like burn-out, some people just have a headache, others are depressed, others can't sleep well. There are many kinds. And how will it materialize for you? How will you understand that you're not well afterwards?

I was on a constant alert. You're in the street, you look at everyone's hands, you look at the one with a slouchy head, you look at if he has a backpack, if he has something that protrudes, like a detonator for a bomb, if his bag is big enough to hold a gun, all that. So you're always at the beginning, you're really at the start. It's impossible to be back and forth in a bar at the beginning, and so you force yourself to do it, but it's hard. You say, I don't want to... You don't put water on the road, no more water...

You say, if a car comes, it will blow up. You go into a bar, you say, what can stop a ball of kalash? You spot the pylons, you spot the stuff, and at first you do it by stressing, and then you do it...

I do it in a way that no one notices. But I'm not panicking, just... What saved me that night was a lot of luck, So you went to see psychologists, we're talking about PTSD, but a military PTSD, firefighters, police, there are a lot of jobs, you can have a lot of different jobs. Did you go see a psychologist for a long time?

I went to see a lot of different psychiatrists and I took some time to find the right one and for years, the first years I was in Denmark so already doing therapy in English was... it could have been for me but it wasn't necessarily easy for the therapist and when you're faced with someone who has experienced something as extreme sometimes people are more in the kind of wow than they are trying to help you

I experienced it, it's pretty weird It's the psychiatrist who... Yeah, I was a bit focused on the party, the events, and the crazy events, more than anything else. The hardest part was the after party, well, it was very hard, but what was also very complicated was to manage the after party, to tell myself I should be dead, what should I do now to deserve to keep living?

And then I found a great psychologist in France, who is no longer here, and who did me a lot of good.

I did the EMDR, I did a lot of therapies. What worked best for you? Because the MDR is a kind of hypnosis

to empty the...

It doesn't empty you, it emotionally distances you from a memory. It doesn't erase the memory, but it's a traumatic memory. You can distance yourself from it emotionally. So I still have all the images very precise,

but there's no heart beating at 3000 when you think about it. You talk about PTSD, you also talk about people. Two seconds ago, did you see the five people you were in the toilet with again? The people I was in the toilet with, I organized very quickly. I was abroad, so when I came back to France, I organized aperos in bars, like a lot of people do in the assault. And it was very nice to meet again.

I had left my business card to the girl who was injured saying that she would have told me, and I didn't have any news. So I thought, she's dead, I haven't heard from her for a month and a half, two months. And she wrote me back, she found my card much later, and I went to visit her at the hospital. At first, I didn't even recognize her when I saw her, because we were in the hospital. Yes, she spent months in the hospital, but she had a lot of surgeries.

We got back together, and then everyone dealt with their trauma and their relationship with it as they wanted. I don't have any more links with most of these people, but I made friends. Who were there.

Yes, who became intimate friends. We had a common life, we are all very different. Some were 20 years old at the time, some were 65 years old, some of us were 65, some had children, others not. We all have this common desire to go to the essential.

To connect.

Yes, really. There is a kind of general benevolence, we don't talk about it all the time, we don't talk about attacks or anything. But we have a common taste for either rock, which is a good thing,

or to enjoy it, and that's the first thing. You made friends, but you also met love. With a girl who is also a survivor of the Bataglan.

How did it happen?

Basically, we met in a place where we both participated in a study that took place in Guadeloupe. They tried to mix the submarine dive with sophrology and meditation. And so they wanted to show that...

Who, they? The state?

It was organized by scientists and people from the Army.

That's incredible!

And basically, there were two applications. There is one for the army, where the guys who come from the front, the guys or the fighters who come from the front and who are psychologically damaged, can go through this protocol and try to cure their post-traumatic stress. It doesn't cancel it, but it decreases it over a given period. It can really do something.

And there is also a civil application called Baptiste Med, which is also very good, people who just have a burnout, just a burnout, I would say, and it does a lot of good too. So you go there in Guadeloupe. How many French people are there? We're a big thirty, 35-36 I think. For a scientific experiment. And in this group of people,

there's your future wife?

Yeah, girlfriend. But for now, you're watching me, it'll happen. But yeah, I was with my girlfriend at the time, she was with someone too, but we became friends thanks to that. And later on, we became more than friends. We first became colleagues and then a couple.

Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah, it's a great story.

10 years later, how are you doing psychologically? Do you still see psychologists? Do you still work on that? Or is it going a little better today?

It's going a lot better. The trial, to go and testify, it did me a lot of good. To be able to say what I had to say. Literally, a deposition, you deposit something, it's really the case. I was able to leave something behind me and move forward. And that did me a lot of good. Setting up the guarantee fund, which is very complicated.

People, I don't know if they know this account. What is the Guarantee Fund? The Guarantee Fund is basically an insurance system. When you pay your insurance, there is a small percentage of the insurance that everyone pays that goes to this fund, which is used to compensate people who have collective accidents, so plane crashes, things like that, or if there is a problem with a plane that is not solvable. And basically, this fund compensates people who have a through a rough time, and they evaluate them. Your wife died in the Bataclan, we'll give you your money.

There are criteria, so it's pretty crazy, but it can really save you, because for years you can't work, you can't get over it. And there are people who are also disabled, who have had serious surgeries,

and who can't have the same life they had before. And so, the French state has done its part and I didn't want to have the same life as before. The French government did a good job and helped people. Except that it's a complicated process. Did you get money? Yes, but it's complicated to be faced with a psychiatrist who constantly tries to reduce what you've lived

and who reproaches you for saying that I'm reducing my symptoms. Their goal is to reduce to give less. Yes, to give less money. And she kept telling me not to waste my time and I explained that it was my way to move forward. There were people who were worse than me,

there were people who lost loved ones, who lost the use of their legs, whatever. We don't realize it, but in Bataclan, there were the dead, but there were... Injured, many. compared to those who started to get injured, but they are extremely serious injuries, people who have lost limbs or whatever, it's really serious. It's a war weapon, so it's war injuries.

Beyond that, it's more than mental trauma, it's psychological trauma, so it does a lot of things. And so their goal was to give you the least possible? Yeah, I want to... It's a second penalty. Yeah, yeah, you have to try to convince someone how bad your life has become. So you ask all your relatives to testify, I would say, not testify, I speak in English, sorry,

to explain how cool your life was before, you worked well and you were a funny guy, and how bad your life has become now, and that you gained 20 kilos or lost 20 kilos, and that you were a good boyfriend but you became a bad guy, or that your son died before, that you were just a good colleague but now you're not very creative and you're not very reliable

because at night you have nightmares and you have insomnia so after a while you're fed up with it and you want it to be fixed so you accept what they give you and you say to yourself, I didn't expect to have money and then you get rid of it to move forward We haven't talked about it since the beginning, but what is your job and what did you do at the time?

I was a designer.

Because you were in Denmark, you went to work as a designer in Denmark.

No, I went for a girl, for the girl I was at the time, but I was a freelance designer, so I designed objects, I designed sites, I did graphic design, I was an artistic director. I was doing that there, and after the Bataclan, it was extremely complicated for me to work, because I was on my own.

So waking up in the morning, calling the clients,

and sitting in front of a screen for 8 hours,

it's very complicated.

There's a victim association called Life for Paris. You've heard of it, yes? It's mine. It's thanks to it that I found all the people I was hiding with. I told my story on the Facebook page, like many people did, and that's how I found all the people I was hiding with.

Did you create the association?

No, not at all. It's Maureen Roussel, and it's an association that has done a lot of good to a lot of people, and that will disappear for the next 10 years, but that will continue to exist, but not in its administrative form, administrative, but that helped a lot of people. Thank you for coming, for taking the time.

I know it's not easy to talk, to tell your story. It's been 10 years, let's say you didn't really do it like that.

But it went very well?

Yes, up to here. Thank you very much. Thank you for taking the time, Benjamin. Now you don't live in Denmark anymore, you live in Paris. And you're preparing your film, we were saying earlier. I don't talk too much about artistic projects before they're done.

We'll talk about it again in a year. To not be a burden on you, but we're touching wood for you. Thank you for taking the time. We're continuing this show on the 13th of November, so in a moment you'll see the head of the RED, who was there, Jean-Michel Fauvergue, the chief physician of the RED. You met them earlier, I think.

Did you know them? Did you meet them before? No, I had heard of the doctor during the trial,

but I hadn't met Mr. Fauvergue. His name is Mathieu, the chief physician of the RED. And we'll have Arthur later. Let's go. Stephanie has arrived. Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you for coming to tell us about the 10th anniversary of the Bataclan concert.

You were there too, you went to see a concert. You were a fan of the band, the League of Death Metal, you knew them, you had already seen them in concert for the first time.

It was the first time, it was a side project of the singer of Queen of the Stone Age. A side project, what does that mean? It's an annex project of a main group. So they have two groups?

Yes.

Ok.

I had tried to go in June 2015 for the Trianon, but it was already full. So there was the session in November and I took my tickets much earlier and I could not have my place.

You could not have your place? place. You're going alone tonight? Yes. It's important to understand what's going to happen.

I'm used to doing concerts with friends or alone, it doesn't bother me to go alone. I tend to sympathize quite easily with people.

You're not complicated, you're sociable. So you're going alone, you take your place, you arrive very early, a little late?

I arrive rather early, I forced myself to go there because I had a bit of a complicated day at work and I ended the day with a good headache and I gave myself a bit of a kick in the ass to go there.

What do you do as a job?

At the time I was in charge of a data management office at InSerm.

Okay, okay.

And so I arrive, it was 7 hours and a half, there was really not a lot of people in front, not a lot of people in the room. I come home, I stop a little bit at Merch to buy a bandana and a CD. I chat a little bit with the merch guy, who speaks French well.

So it's merchandising, who sells t-shirts, mugs, derivative products.

And then I go to the short-sleeved balustrade of the Bazaar Clan. For those who have never been there, there is the Seine, the Fosse, and all around there is a balustrade a little higher than the Fosse, where you can see better when you are small like me. But once I go to the Bataclan alone, I tell myself, I'm going to take the opportunity to go to the barrier.

I'm not with friends who absolutely want to be next to the bar. So I cross the Fosse I settle down at the barrier, right in front, on the left. That's where there's a little bit of room left.

The concert will start.

The concert starts. Jesse Hughes, in all his glory, arrives with a Christmas cape. He immediately heats up the room. He's really a showman. He's very close to his audience,

so he talks a lot with people, he knows how to set the mood, and then he dances, he sings, it's very festive. He's used to doing rock and metal concerts, I've never done a concert as festive as this one. Everyone has a smile, it's a bit of a mess, but people are sorry to move around a bit. It's a bit of, but people are apologizing for moving a bit.

It's a bit awkward in there. Yeah, it's like jumping around, one on top of the other. But the atmosphere is so good that people are apologizing for moving a bit. It's really cool. I even managed to get a guitar pick, a pick-up, launched by the guitarist. The two people next to me too, so we're check our points because we each got a guitar pick. And then my friend wrote me a text asking me how it was going.

I sent him some pictures. It's 9.30pm.

A quarter of an hour before the attack.

And then at some point during the song Kiss the Devil, during the instrumental part, I have Jesse Hughes right in front of me. The singer?

Yes, the singer.

I was taking pictures, and when I put my phone in my pocket, I hear gunshots in the background. The first thing that comes to my mind is a missed special effect, or a problem with the sound board, but I don't think so at all.

You think it's a technical problem, not a shooting problem. No, it's completely incongruous. They stop playing, there's a video, the only video... I turn around to see what's going on, and I look at the scene again and there's no one there. And I turn around again to understand,

and I see people falling, like dominoes, one on top of the other. And so I push myself. In fact, I had put my things on a wall in Vauban that had been added to the fixed barrier, it was to delimit a location for photographers. There is no more barrier.

So the wall in Vauban is the iron wall?

Yes, it's the street stuff, the street barriers. And the barrier is no longer there, my things fell to the ground, and I crouch. And there, from where I am, when I look towards the entrance, I see a cap, a head with a cap, which is detached in a Chinese shadow on the window,

the double doors that we pass, that we cross to enter the room. And then I see flashes coming out of there, but I still don't understand what it is. And when I... I'm telling you this like this, it looks very constructed, but in my head, it's extremely unsewn.

I'm missing images, it's not fluid like that. I think my brain has already understood what was going on, but I, consciously, I's not fluid like that. I think my brain already understood what was going on, but I consciously didn't catch anything. And I look, still crouched, I look towards the bar, and there I see a guy, very young, his skull almost shaved, a kind of faux-set on the chin, the cheeks, the sc the chest. No expression on the face.

A white bluff?

White, yes. I think it's the spots on the chest that give it that colour. But really, no expression on the face. And I have the impression of seeing on him a vest with reflective bands, but in fact, no. I'll learn later that it was the adhesive of the explosive vest. And then he has a Kalashnikov in his hands,

and I see the flashes coming out of the barrel, he moves like that, methodically, and he shoots, shot by shot. And then my brain blocked all the sounds. That is to say, I hear no shots. I see the shots go by, just the flashes, but I don't have the sounds. And at some point, I feel a pain in my left arm.

So I look, I had a long sleeve t-shirt, no blood, no hole in the t-shirt, so well. But you're not running at that moment? No, but I still didn't understand anything. It's like I was watching a movie.

You're totally titanized.

But there was no emotion, zero emotion. Zero... I'm not really there, it doesn't really happen to me. I understand that I'm completely separated from the stuff. I'll understand that later. And at some point, I hear behind me, I have to go.

So I see people in front of me getting up. I always remember the very blonde hair of a woman with a pink sweater. So I take my bag and my coat on the floor.

You still take your bag.

I'm a girl, I take my bag and my coat. the floor. You take your bag anyway. I'm a girl, I take my bag and my coat, which is a piece. It's stupid, you know. There are situations where you can... I think your brain is hooking on any real thing. And there, it's the black hole, the most total. It's not me anymore, Stephanie, who's in charge of my body.

I don't know what happened. I lost a few minutes of consciousness. So I think it's my... My survival instinct took over the commands of my body to get me out. Because now I... I don't remember what happened. No consciousness. A total blackout.

Were there surveillance cameras? No external camera, but it's the video of the journalist of Le Monde who lived next to the Bataclan, at the Amelot crossing.

We see the door of the rescue open, people coming out, and a girl holding on to the empty space.

Yes, that's it. And my father recognizes me on the video.

Live? Yeah, dad, live.

It's when it was published by Le Monde. And he sees me running with my bag under my right arm. I try to put my coat on with my left arm. And it's about 9.51 p.m. So I didn't stay long. But it's enough to trigger all the shit that came after.

What's the shit that comes after?

It's the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. When I run, I just feel exhilaration, but I still don't have any emotions, I have nothing. And I still don't understand what's going on inside.

Do you run in a zigzag?

Yes, because when I hid a little further in the passage to Melo, there was an American guy who passed by me and said to me in English, « Run, run, they're shooting in the street. » He's shooting in the street? Yeah, he's shooting in the street, and I still can't hear the shots, so I told myself, well, I'm going to do like in the movies,

I'm not going to be a fixed target, so I went up the whole Amelot passage in a zigzag.

Running.

And then, when I arrived at Amelot street, at the end of the passage, I came across the two people who were next to me. So we hugged each other.

In the break?

You mean, who was with you at the concert?

That's it.

That you didn't know. No. With whom you had talked for 5 minutes. That's it. And so we hug each other, we laugh and everything, we have... Stop it.

Euphoric. We have... Emotions not too appropriate, but well... We don't have too much control over what's going on. And I don't know why we separate. I try to take the street on the right, there's a guy who tells me,

don't go that way, go back to Bataclan. So I follow him, there's another group of people, we cross the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and by running we arrive in a bar at the end of Comines street, where we find a shelter, and then I call my friend who told me to go to that concert.

You said thank you for the idea.

Thank you for the tip. I explain to myself and then I understand that it's serious, the token ends up falling.

And it takes time.

It took time. In fact, when I went up the passage to the water before riding in a zigzag, I sat down to finally put my bag and my coat on.

You put your coat back on, quietly.

Instead of running.

That's it. But for me, it was always... No, but maybe it's young people who came to fuck shit up, they left, we go back to them.

Come on, we're leaving.

Oh yeah?

And... And you could see that there was a gap, it didn't bother you? Yes, but it's the saroo, it's completely what the fuck, there's no logic. And there I see people supporting a guy who has blood on him, and that's where...

But you understand.

I understand. It's not a joke, it's not just to screw up. Because before you didn't see blood.

No.

You only saw flashes.

That's it. And I miss a lot of images of what happened. My brain didn't really record everything.

That's crazy.

When I go out, when I see myself going out, I only see the field of vision in front of me. I don't have peripheral vision anymore, so I don't see the people around me. I see a man who holds his belly next to me. I pass by and I don't see him, actually. And I'm going to feel really guilty about that.

Why?

I didn't help anyone.

Did you do what you could?

Yeah, but well... It's always hard to say that we came out alive, but we didn't hurt anyone. Indeed, the brain didn't let the... Did you want to do it afterwards? Yes. It was extremely hard afterwards.

It's more for the others, in the end.

Yes. Because in the end, I find refuge in the bar. I have friends who tell me, come home, don't stay at home alone, come home, join us, so I go to their place. And when I get to their place, I really have all the adrenaline going down, I melt down on home, I really have... all the adrenaline that goes down, I...

I collapse when I get home, I crack, I cry, and I look at myself in the mirror at the door, I have blood on my face that's not mine, I'm bleeding...

You hadn't felt the blood?

No. And that's when I realize that if I survived, it's because there are people who took bullets behind me, who died behind me. And that's what's hard. Because for a long time, I thought that... And my psyche was yelling at me every time I said that,

but it's people who took bullets in my place.

-"Survivor syndrome"?

Yeah, and it was really hard, because I didn't do anything that deserved me to survive, and not them. So that's what was a little difficult.

And after, that night, at your friends'?

Once I got there, I was shot at the endorphins, as if I had smoked 12 cigarettes at the same time. I thought there was only one thing, it was to sleep. So I set up for the night, I turn off the light, I think about sleeping, and in fact, no, it's the... The most total white night, where the images come back,

are in loop, constantly, and there, the emotions come, and there, it's the anxiety, the panic, but the most total, because I really realize what I just escaped from.

The trial was in 2021, in 2022? 2021, 2022. What are you going to... Are you going to see Benjamin, who spoke before,

are you going to ask him to speak or... Yeah, I'm going to contact my lawyer the same day, saying, in fact, I have the ability to speak, I can do it. There are some who can't anymore, or who can't. And I have to do it. So he says to me, I sign you up on the lists and I'll go on Wednesday, right after.

There are a lot of people? It's full, every time.

We can't imagine, because there are no cameras.

What are those? Dozens, hundreds of people? Hundreds of people. It's for 500 people, the room. It's the biggest room in France, I imagine, of trials. Yeah. Well, actually, since there was no equivalent, they built it on purpose for the V13. In the room of the lost steps of the Palace of Justice.

It was dismantled this year, in April.

And so you're going to talk about it in front of everyone?

So...

I wanted to talk,

briefly tell what happened to me, and especially the after.

At first, I didn't want to show signs of weakness in front of the terrorists,

and then I said to myself, in fact, this trial is for me too,

so I might as well put it in the proper sense of the term.

And so, yeah, I really wanted to talk about the after, about post-traumatic stress disorders, about everything that it destroyed in a life, about the difficulty of rebuilding afterwards, about the association, well, basically, if there hadn't been Life For Paris, I don't really know if I would be here to talk to you, for example, about the importance that it had in my life.

And that's it.

Did they talk to the accused?

When you talked to them, did they answer afterwards or did they just listen?

No, they listen. Everyone had their time, actually. The first... The month of September was really dedicated to the investigation and the results of the investigation.

So the findings on the results of the investigation.

So, the findings on the sites...

The trial would last a long time.

Nine months. After that, it was the civil parties... We had a few small COVID interruptions too. And the interrogation of the accused started in January. And it lasted with experts who also passed, radicalization, Islam, etc.

And so some spoke, answered, others did not. It's the ones that worry me the most. It's not those who, on the contrary, when they speak, well, in fact, they lose their status of accused a little bit,

and we become human, in fact, they become a little human again. they lose their status as accused,

and they become human again. And I think that for them, it must have been the same. They must have seen us as a non-human mass of information, and the fact that they heard us, it may have caused something in them, which made them able to speak as well.

They accepted to speak.

What did they say?

There was one who asked to speak.

I don't remember if it was Avery or someone else,

I wouldn't say nonsense, but...

He spoke to say that he was really moved by a testimony and that he was sincerely sorry for what had happened. He was an accomplice, it wasn't part of the commando or anything, it was more a second knife, but... But it had upset him and that... He was absolutely sorry for everything that had happened to us. At first I was convinced that... I wasn't expecting Abdeslam to talk,

I didn't care, etc. But in fact, when he started talking in April, I realized that no, I really, unconsciously, was expecting that. And he talked for three days. And I went through almost the entire emotional spectrum possible while listening to him talk.

Relief, anger, sadness...

Why? What did he say for two, three days?

He told his November 13th story, from the moment they took the cars to the moment he said he was giving up on getting blown up in the 18th's café. Then it went up again, on his taxi in Paris, and he went back to Belgium.

And he ended up crying, apologizing to the victim, hoping that we weren't too bad against him, and that he, now, he aspires to no longer do this... Anyway, he is condemned to perpetuity, but... But, well, to give up on these things.

And, in fact, it made me feel really good that he was talking. Because it took me out of my status as a victim. It was no longer a worker-victim relationship, it was a human being to a human being. And there, it was Friday, I had only one idea in mind, it was to take my car, to go to the court,

to talk to his lawyer, so that she could tell him, on my behalf, thank you for speaking, that it did me good, and that I had no particular anger against him. It would have been someone...

Him or someone else, it wouldn't have changed anything. The terrorists who have hurt us, they're all dead now. None of them have escaped. And when I arrived, the session had just been lifted. There were still a few lawyers in the room,

some friends who were still there. And so I ask one of the defense lawyers to take me to Mr. Ronen, the lawyer from Amdeslam. I see that he is still in the box of the accused, he is discussing with a lawyer. And I tell him why I'm here.

To whom? To Maître Ronen. And there, she looks at me, she says to me, OK, if you want, but it's not an obligation, if you don't feel it, it's not a problem, but if you want, you can tell him.

Yourself. In Abdeslam. And so, I tell myself, I'm a few meters away, okay, let's go after the thing. And so, I approach him.

There's always the police behind him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But... And then I say hello to him, we say hello to each other, and I explain to him, I talk to him, I don't say my name, but I...

I explain to him that I was at the Bataclan, that I thanked him for talking to me, that it did me good, that... that... I mean...

I had played the part of believing what he had said, well, that's just my point of view, we don't know... and that I didn't have any particular anger or hatred against him. That's it, it stopped there. And I'm starting to be a little moved. I see that he's starting to get emotional too.

And he smiles at me and says, he thanks me for coming to talk to him, that it's good for him too, and he wishes me good luck. He says, see you soon.

I'm like, maybe not.

And so we leave, he... Well, there's a policeman who accompanies him to the exit. I'm going to see my friends. And he turns back to me again, he waves his hand at me, I do the same, and then, well, that's it. It was surreal.

And for me, at that moment, the trial was over. I later understood that this is what we call restorative justice, actually. It's the confrontation between the victims and the accused, and that's what allows to... to close the chapter definitively, to move on to something else and...

Anyway, it did you good that day.

Incredible! All the tension I had accumulated And... Anyway, it was a good day for you?

Incredible! All the tension I had accumulated during the three days and even the months that preceded it, is gone.

And... yeah.

Thank you for coming. Tell us...

I didn't even know what to say after what you just told me, I didn't know!

But yeah, it was a crazy moment. In any case, it's your way, everyone has a way to mourn, everyone has a way to repair themselves after a trauma, but the main thing is to find the way out. For you, you said it's better and it's in...

It's better, it's better. It's better, I had concerts before, but... Always so many concerts, and then... Life or Paris friends.

We'll meet up later. Arthur, he was also part of the association.

Yes, from the start.

Arthur allowed the band to escape. He's going to tell us. Thank you very much, I'm checking you. Thank you for group to escape. He's going to tell us. Thank you very much, I thank you for coming to us. It's a pleasure to have you. And we continue the show on November 13, 2015, today on the special show Bataclan on Legend. And that's it, our guest is here, Jean-Michel.

Hello Jean-Michel. Hello Guillaume. Jean-Michel Fauvergne, you were the boss of the RAID from 2013 to 2017. Since today's topic is November 13th, 2015, we're really talking about the Bataclan, we're going to focus on that. But if you agree, we'll do another show just about your journey, which is very rich, full of anecdotes, full of stories to tell.

You wrote books, by the way, we'll use them later, neither capitulation nor resignation. Let's dare to be brave. At Fayard, we'll come back to it in a few minutes, you say something about it. You say, on November 13th, 2015, at the head of my Red team, I crossed the doors of Bataclan trampling the bodies, sliding on the blood we have crossed the limits of what a civilized society

could accept in times of peace. What does that mean concretely? It means that this year, and more particularly in Bataklan, France has been attacked in everything it represents. Everything it represents of equality,

everything it represents of dignity, everything it represents of freedom. And those who went to defend those values, it was the people of the Red and the BRI, who intervened, and many others around, because there were all the police officers

of the police prefecture, there were the emergency services, etc. And we have, so, that day, indeed, we went back to Bataclan, where it was a major massacre, and we were attacked that day in an inhuman way,

and it's something we have to remember. It's something that must be remembered and revive our courage today. You, on November 13th, 2015, where were you when you learned, because the aim of the show is to understand, from several points of view,

ten years ago today. How do you learn it? Where are you at the moment? There are two remarkable things about this evening. The first is that I had at the Stade de France two officers, two commanders of the RAID who were around the teams of the President of the Republic

of France at the time. François Hollande at the time. François Hollande. Why were they there? Because we were preparing the Euro 2016, which took place a year later, and we were working in symbiosis with the presidential team to find out how we could evacuate the president if there was ever an attack, etc.

That day, by chance? That day, yes. We were watching. Our two higher officers were there, two Reds commanders. So, first of all, I was notified quite quickly.

The second thing that is particular, is that on that day, I was organizing at my home a meal, which was a cohesion meal, which we had every two or three months, with the whole of the Red hierarchy,

who were with me, all my assistants, their wives, and so I was informed, but they were informed immediately. This allowed me to distribute my orders fairly quickly and to send my assistants to this and that place, to organize my repose, to alert everyone, etc. Do you feel that it's different from usual, right away?

Yes, but we had to remember that we were in an exceptional situation. In 2015, every two months, we had either a major attack, or attempts of major attacks. So I went to get my heavy equipment at the RAID, and on the way, we got the information. And in fact, the information, since we had the radio, the police radio, which was saturated,

we got the information on FM radio. Oh my! Info radio? Info radio, which was particularly well informed. And every time we had an info on Info radio, we had confirmation by the radio police.

Incredible! So we had a little delay.

You were caught by the journalists, the info, live.

But you have to know, you know when you are a chief of the RAID, or you are a head of a unit, or you're a chief of something, you have to know how to get informed by various channels. Because...

And you have to admit that sometimes the journalistic channels are very fast. And so we know that there are attacks on the terraces, so it continues, there are over-attacks, with, on the terraces, there was an explosive vest, and that there is a major hostage take at Bataclan.

I go to Bataclan with a heavy team, in the meantime, my assistant with his light team, his team on wheels, was there, I ask him to go to Bataclan, he joins the head of the BRI, who also had a restricted team. There were about twenty of them, the first intervening people were around twenty. But before that, the RAID was working in a police-national atmosphere.

The first police-national intervening people were on site. And remember that this evening, the first one to enter the Bataclan was neither someone from the BRI nor someone from the RAID, but it was the head of the Paris University with his driver,

both of them very bravely, while they were in what we call light clothes, that is, with just a bulletproof vest that stops the bullet. Pistol bullets. With their handguns, they bravely enter. You have to go there. Yes, they are the real heroes of the evening,

I can guarantee you that, alongside the police. They bravely enter, they shoot, they shoot on one of the three... There were three kamikazes at Bataclan, they shoot on one of the three... There were three kamikazes at Bataclan, they shoot on one of the three kamikazes,

they impact it, they blow it up, or they get blown up, we don't know. And then they have to... they have to retreat, because under the fire of the Kalashnikov, the other two can't hold their ground,

so they leave Bataclan. This police commissioner, who bravely entered the Bataclan, is now the chief of the Reds. So, yeah, it's still... – So, he deserved it, today. – Yes, I wanted to point it out.

They were both heroic. And not only did they kill a terrorist, but the fact of killing the terrorist and setting fire to him brings to light a whole theory that we had developed for almost a year with the head of the GIGN, since we work together,

which is to say that every time we have someone, a terrorist or a mass murderer, because the Americans call a terrorist or a mass murderer, what the Americans call a mass murderer, well, the idea is that the first responders engage the fire to either end the problem, definitively, or make sure that the one who kills stops killing, stops his massacre and cuts himself off.

And leaves us time to arrive. And that's exactly what happened. That is, by opening fire, they already killed a first terrorist and then the other two stopped the phenomenal massacre that they had, which was super fast. They killed 90,100 people very quickly.

They stopped shooting and they split up. Behind the scene, there were lodges, in the lodges, with hostages. From that moment on, they stopped massacring people. It gave us time to arrive and to set up our devices. That's what happened at Bataclan. You are in front of it. How long does it take before you give the assault?

You said the two police officers of the BAC, and after how long does it take? That is to say that the two police officers of the BAC intervene first. Then we have these fast teams of the BRI, with the chief of the BRI and my assistant, who are on site and therefore who go quickly to the sites and who start to but they are really very few, so they start to frame things as much as possible to secure and I arrive with my fast team, my heavy team of the RAID

just after will arrive almost at the same time, a little time, the heavy teams of the BRI will arrive. So I arrive at the head of my heavy team, while the head of the BRI and my assistant are already inside. And when I arrive at the door of the Bataclan, first of my heavy team,

I am facing an absolute massacre, something unthinkable, something that was already happening. What struck me were the phones that were vibrating because the massacre had already been announced, because the Bataclan issue was already being announced

and people were trying to join their families and loved ones. There were these phones that vibrated in the pockets of people who were already dead or injured, who were lying on the ground. There was this smell too. Death, that night, had the smell of powder and blood, which is a bitter smell.

So we arrived and we were completely... frozen for a while. And then, obviously, you're at the head of the raid. You have to go all the way, that is, neutralize the two remaining terrorists.

Where were you in the column?

I was in the front of the column. The chief is not in front, normally. The chief is not in front. We have a protocol. The chief is not in front because, by definition, if the chief is in front and gets killed,

there is no chief. That's the first thing. And then, if you are inside the assault column, there are several ways to do it. But at the RAID, we determined that if you are in the assault column, while you are the leader, you are sharp, you train, you do...

But there are always better people than you, it's possible. But these are people who are much more specialized and better. If you get in the middle, you will create chaos. That is to say, the one in front of you and the one behind you, your men, will protect the chief. And by protecting the chief, they won't do their assigned mission.

So they take risks. Here, we're in a completely atypical situation. I arrive, I'm the first in the column, I see this massacre. And so I'm in front, with my operations commander, with my assistant who joined me. I'm in front of it. I even have a negotiator

who is next to me but who is not there to negotiate because we no longer negotiate with this type of terrorist. But we all are dressed in light clothes, that is to say, light vests, very light helmets.

And so at a certain point, I said, well, we shared the roles with the head of the BRI. The BRI took... We compensated for the fact that there was no common PC, no common command post, because there was no common command, quite simply.

We compensated for it with a ground operational intelligence. And I saw the head of the BRI quite quickly, and we shared the roles. I said, I'll take the ground floor, he takes the first floor, which is a kind of arched floor, with a door on each side,

which leads to the lodges where the terrorists and their hostages were. And this lodge is a door behind the scene. So our role at the Reds is to take the ground floor, to block the door so that the terrorists don't get out through there, and to wait for the BRI to trigger the assault from above, because logically an assault is done from above to below,

and to break the doors and trigger the assault. The BRI was reinforced with snipers from the Reds on their floors. The BRI, once they were in place, and we were in place, gave the assault from top to bottom. So they opened the two doors on each side and directed their assault.

They launched the assault with offensive grenades. The two terrorists retreated down the stairs. At some point, the first of them was hit or was blown up, I don't know, by the BRI assault. So he blew up, his vest blew up, and he killed his acolyte, a bit lower.

And during that time, the hostages who were lying on their stomachs,

given the fact that he had moved back in the stairs, the machine gun that had been fired, with a bolt, a nail, etc., had been fired rather upwards, and so, there were no hostages who were hit. And the explosion's breath No hostages were hurt. The explosion blew through the corridor, and went down the corridor, and blew up the door that we and the Reds had maintained.

The first Red door was hit by the pulmonary alveoli, so it blew up the pulmonary alveoli. It was well put back on. And at the same time, I was just next to it, we had the wrong roof that fell on our heads. Well, the EMP...

And the assault... Did you understand that it was over at that time? Yes, because on the police radio, the BRI announced that the two kamikazes had been killed. And then, well, but after. But it's not quite over yet, because we have to go and deliver the hostages,

who are no longer at immediate risk. But we are still cautious, and we try to see if things are not mined, that is, if we have not put explosives on the right and on the left. And on top of that, we have to warn the hostages who have taken refuge in the most improbable places

and tell them, come with us, we will deliver you, we will bring you back. And people, some hostages, see people in black, they don't trust us, so it's difficult. They are not sure that you are the police? No, they are not sure, and we had black, they don't trust us, so it's difficult. They're not sure you're the police? No, they're not sure, and we had to, at a certain point, they didn't want to open the door,

and so at a certain point we had to go through the windows too, so try to find fire escape ladders to go through the windows, etc. And at the same time, just before starting the assault, that's where I wanted to clarify this before starting the assault.

When the ground floor is secured, when the first floor is secured before the assault, the doctor, start to see, evacuate, see what you can do, etc.

And he started this job long before the beginning of the assault. What did you do right after? When all this was over, you could go home, sleep, you went to see friends, you stayed together, what did you do? First of all, it lasted a very long time. Once the two terrorists were neutralized,

the case was not over, so it lasted a very long time. We waited for everyone to be evacuated. We proceeded to secure the evacuation of the injured, in case, always the same principle, there is a terrorist who is infiltrated or who has escaped. And so it took a crazy amount of time.

Then, once it was over, I released my men who left again on the Red, on the rear base of the Red. But for the head of the Red, the case was not over because you are the head of the Red and you are going to take into account the authority, in particular the political authority.

And I remember going to Beauvau and seeing the minister of the intervention that had happened, etc. How it had unfolded, before the minister and the political authorities

went on site.

So François Hollande arrives outside, in the middle of the night. In the middle of the night, yes. Yes, but it aspect has been criticized. I am far from criticizing it, and I think he did well to go there. And above all, I have met men and women politicians afterwards too.

We realize in this evening that this it's full of emotions for everyone. And a President of the Republic who experiences this, in my opinion, it's not commonplace, and then we can understand the emotion, the desire to go there. With his Prime Minister, with his Minister of the Interior, obviously they were all there,

some said, imagine if there is a surrealist attack, we blow up everyone and there is no one left in the head of the state? Yes, but... Yes, but... These humans, they needed to see that, and to increment it in their brain.

You go home right after that?

I go home, so, well after. I go home and what we... That's it. It's very important because we need... We need a place where we feel safe, where we feel at home. So yes, I go home.

I take a shower, we need to wash, but... Not just the body. The shower is used to wash totally. And then I slip into the sheets, there was my wife, and then we clean everything up. And that's where things come back. And I think that was the hardest moment. Is that true?

Yes.

It was the hardest moment, and we need people who love you around you. And... that's it. You're going to be on the Saint-Denis assault, to finish. I think it was 5 days later, on the 18th, I think. Yes, on the 18th. A few days later, you're going to leave again for the Saint-Denis assault. Do you want to go back when you get out of it? No, we don't want to go back. Of course not. Of course not. It would be a lie if I told you that I would be happy to go back.

That's not true. No, we didn't come back, but we don't ask ourselves the question. You are the head of the RAID. You are the RAID. There is the RAID behind you. We tell you, we spotted them. We spotted one of the brains that did this massacre

on which you intervened a few days earlier. He is dangerous, he is with an accomplice, a third accomplice joined them. There are at least two who have vests, if not all three, who have explosive vests. We saw them, there were cameras set up, we see them go out

with big jackets, etc. We know they have explosive vests, those that will prove to be exact, since one of them got shot with this explosive vest. And we tell you, in the evening, at 10pm, at 10pm,

we tell you, Jean-Michel, we spotted them, it's for you. And it's the undersecretary of the PJ, of the judicial police, who tells me that. I say, OK, I warn let everyone know, I'll put everyone on alert, I'll go to the RAID, we'll define the type of assault we're going to do, I'll go back with my main assistants to the DGSI and the anti-terrorist service headquarters, we'll see the video footage, we'll see the stuff, we'll set up the time of the stuff, we set up the time of intervention, and I go back to the raid and I inform my guys,

I say, we go back there, we will use this technique, we will try to go very fast to catch them as soon as possible. The goal was to catch them at the start, taking huge risks, huge, because they had explosive vests, because their explosive vests were unstable,

they just had to put them on them or just at the foot of the bed and they would put a punch on them, it could explode and make me explode the column of assault at the same time. The goal was to blow up the doors, and to go very, very fast to stop them. Thank you very much Jean-Michel for coming to us

to tell us about this period of your life, and this day, and a few days, you've done a lot as the patron of the RED from 2013 to 2017. Thank you very much. I remind you, if you want to take Jean-Michel Fauverg's book, it's available in the FAIAR editions, I'll put a link in the description of the YouTube video, it's called Neither capitulation nor resignation, dare courage. Jean-Michel Fouvert, there is your photo with the operators of the RED behind, from DOE, if you are looking for it.

And in the description, on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcast, Amazon Podcast, I will put the link of the book, if you want to order it, you just have to click in the description. There will be all that. Hello Guillaume. Mathieu, you were a doctor at RED.

A chief doctor, right?

How do you say that? Well, titles aren't really our thing. So I'm a doctor. You're a doctor. I'm still a doctor. You're still a doctor but not at RED today.

No, I left in late 2021.

We're focusing on this show to try and understand what happened during the 10 years of the Bataclan on November 13, 2015. You're a doctor, but you're equipped... Do you learn to use a weapon when you're at the Rennes?

Yes, we learn to handle weapons and, above all, to put them in safety, because that's possibly what we could do. But, as doctors, when we're fully integrated into an assault column, our vocation is only to heal, to organize the rescue, it's not to take care of, or even less, to neutralize the threat.

Understanding the environment in which we live and in which we will have to work, yes, that's an obligation. It's not easy, I'm a doctor, I work in an operating room, in an emergency service, in a reanimation unit, in a SAMU, it's not the same environment at all. So we have to train and learn to work,

while next to us there are only people with weapons, that it can explode, that... So that's how we're going to work in this atmosphere. So yes, know the weapons, accept the environment to be able to do your job well. But it's not up to you to use them. I put a point of honor that the doctors are not armed, but that we are totally integrated into a team that is armed and that also has a vocation to protect us.

You don't have a gun, for example? I don't have a gun. You just have a bulletproof vest to protect yourself. Ah yes, on the other hand, we have all the protective equipment. We are in an environment where, unfortunately, security is not really available.

When you come in as a doctor, you are in the column, you said, with a team, at some point.

Well, that, once again, we know how to do it, we arrive as a team, and the doctor is integrated in this team. He's not the first to come in. It's like the boss, the team comes in, and we're the doctor, we're often with an officer. We do it every time.

You were 45 at the time, you were already cured.

You were already doing...

I was 45.

That was 10 years ago.

Thanks.

You had already worked, you didn't start?

Yes, the doctors we recruited at REDD, we take people who already have a real experience of emergency and of vital emergency. We don't take young people who just left school. We need to have guarantees, especially human ones, with a life experience.

And unfortunately, at the Raid, I also had a life experience on other scenes. There was already in January the hypercacher, Mera, and a whole bunch of situations, forced births, hostage taking, which are the main activity of the Reign.

Concretely, to materialize what you do, you see all that, injured people, dead people, what do you do first, precisely, so that we understand, you see,

your choices, what do you do?

Well, precisely, before making choices and before acting, the first and most important thing is already to analyze and understand what is happening. Again, even if we had prepared it, even if there were a lot of processes that we knew, that we perfectly mastered, there is a time of observation that is hard, because that's where we get into the figure.

But first, before knowing how we're going to do it, you have to understand. Understand what exactly we have to do. we are going to do. Understand what exactly we have to do. And there are two problems. There is the threat, and I am under the orders of the officers, of the Red's bosses, who tell me yes or no, we can put in place the rescue operation.

And then I have an objective, which is to understand the severity of the injuries, the number, and the choices we will have to make. But the first time is a time of analysis and then comes, but quickly, the time of action. What is the action about? And the action, I try to have a ... I don't know that I'm trying, I'm a little bit pudic. It's not that I don't want to, but I'm voluntarily pudic

about what happened that night, but I do it. It's also my daily life as a doctor. But if I sum it up, there are three actions. The first is to prioritize. Vulgarly, we say sorting, or sorting, which is a horrible word. I prefer prioritization. So, vulgarly, we say sorting, or sorting,

which is a horrible word. I prefer prioritization. And so, here, it's how there are a lot of injured people, so there's an influx of injured people, with little means. We're two, three doctors, we're not a lot. So, there are all the police officers who will help us,

but we have to prioritize, that is, all those who are alive who are alive out as soon as possible, that's our only goal. But for it to be fluid, we have to decide in what order. And then, of course, the work, as difficult as it is, and that was something we had thought about,

but we have to live it, we're going to leave the people who died on the spot.

For many reasons.

We won't be able to revive them anyway. And then there's the risk too. These are things we had imagined. And then there's the whole judicial aspect behind it. But this role, it's up to the doctor to prioritize, to make choices. It's far from easy, that's why we take doctors who have experience.

That was the first mission we had. Then we had to make gestures, but finally, when we look at the number of injured, we did few gestures. We did some, like a carrot, compressive bandages, some more medical gestures, but it's still a small number compared to the extent and the number of injuries, because the urgency was to put them in safety as soon as possible, so to get them out of this hell.

Because when we intervene at that moment, we have to understand that...

It's not over.

Terrorists are still on the floor. Alive and... Armed, above all. And that there can be... We're talking about a surattempt, but... In the image... We're talking about a surrealist attack, but... What we thought was that there could be a bag trapped,

or a terrorist could be hiding. And the police of the RAID in particular are there to secure all of this, but with a security level that is not 100%. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. And so, we have to go fast, and go fast to get all the injured out as soon as possible.

The main action is to get them out. To extract them, to carry them, to accompany them. And possibly to make some gestures that we will call rescue. But again, we didn't transform the Bataclan into a country hospital. It would have been a total mistake. I've heard that before, but it would have been really stupid.

Because, first, we have to put them in safety. To put them in safety means to bring them closer to the firemen, the SAMU, and then to the hospital and the operating unit. Because I worked in each of these entities,

and I know that what will save lives

is the time we're going to put to take them to the operating room.

Do you remember a person in particular,

who you had a discussion with,

you had to reassure, because there's also a social side to your job?

You have to understand, in a few seconds, the gravity of the injury,

but also the psychological stage,

and how you will be able to bring your medical skills some of whom were injured, but others were just hiding.

I remember we went behind the scene. We had recovered... I was with some Reds guys, and we had recovered a bunch of... of victims who had hidden. One or two were injured,

but all of them were psychologically, obviously, in a state of sideration and they refused to leave, which is what I can understand. They hid, they lived a hell for several hours. And there we were at several, well, more than an hour. But we have to reassure them in a few seconds.

And there, it's the non-verbal, it's a look. I know that I would have said, for example, in this case, my name is Mathieu, I'm a doctor. But behind that, you have to be quick, because we don't have time.

To pass someone else.

No, they understand that what we're going to ask them, that is, to accompany us outside, there is no choice. And you have to do it with a lot of tact. In any case, with as much humanity as possible. And there, again, in the looks, it says a lot. It's through the look that I tried,

like the police officers of the Rhine, we tried to reassure them. And it's through the look that we saw their distress. And so, in a few seconds, we had to tell them, with gestures, that we were going to cross the pit again. We had to imagine what it could mean for them.

You didn't crack at any point? During the... With everything you see, you take it? No, no, actually we are... I was afraid before, as I told you, before coming back,

that's when you become aware, and it's simple, not being afraid when you're told that it's going to be...

It's not normal.

You have to be completely stupid. No, but... No, but it's...

Yeah, you have a problem. No, but... No, but...

In the selection of Red, the one who makes us believe, because in general it's not possible, but the one who makes us believe that he's not afraid, we're going to go and tickle him a little bit to see if... But we're not going to take him, because we're in something else.

We want people who accept...

Who are aware, what.

Exactly. But they will transform it into a capacity to act. So once I did that, I'm really in the action at 200%. And we had prepared so much for that, there were so many things to do, that during the evacuation and the rescue in the Bataclan,

at no time, I didn't even ask myself the question, I was told about the phones ringing, I was told about the stuff, I can tell you, you get a little bit in a bubble.

A tunnel effect.

Yeah, so the tunnel effect is the negative version of the bubble. I prefer to talk about my bubble. You get in a bubble that protects you, you, you have to be honest. It has the purpose of being much more focused on what you're going to do, much more with the necessary lucidity to be able to act in a way that is both careful, not doing anything, I'm not going to risk my life just to risk my life.

So you have to be lucid, but you have to be very effective in the decisions, in the actions that you're going to take. And so you have to have more of a bubble than your tunnel effect, that's the negative version. Basically, you're going into your tunnel without worrying about what's going on around you.

You said in an interview, talking about this day, about the Bataclan, you said, this is where you felt most useful in your medical career.

You did a lot of other things, but this was the day you felt most useful. As a doctor at the R.A.D.D. where we were preparing for this kind of situation, obviously all the efforts we had made together, the demands I shared with my collaborators, and we worked really hard to prepare ourselves, that night I told myself, all this preparation, and when I tell you that...

You understood that day.

We didn't even need, with the other doctor, we didn't even need all the efforts we felt, and hard efforts, on a personal level, white enemies, here and there. Yes, that night we said to ourselves, all this,

all this demand we put in this preparation, I know why we did it. And we are quite polite, as you may have noticed, but we don't even need to tell the police about the raid. We never tell ourselves that, but we know it. We understand each other.

What is important for us, and I have spoken to many police officers about the raid, that night we just did our job as best as possible, for which we had prepared ourselves. Which is already huge, which is had prepared ourselves. And that's already huge, that's already very good, you see. But it was our job.

And the mistake would have been not to do it well, to practice it. But we talk about courage, we talk about... Me, frankly, courage is not to come back, even though it's our job, it's not to heal, even though it's our job,

it's not to take care of yourself, even though it's our job. It's to do your job correctly, in extreme conditions, very demanding, but that we had imagined a little bit. To do your job correctly and try to do it with a lot of human beings. And that's more difficult. And I learned a lot from Bataclan.

I know that... I'm not necessarily talking about it, you didn't come for that, but if you ever want to read the book, you wrote a book, you left it on my desk earlier,

I went to get it, you said, no, I didn't come for that, I said, I know, but can I put the link in the description? Yes, you can. If you want to go and get it, the book is called Medicine of the Red, by Albin Michel, by Mathieu Langlois. I'll put the link in the description if you want to go and get it. Thank you Mathieu for coming,

for taking the time for these 10 years of the 13th of November, 2015, of the Bataclan, we wanted to tell you about it for the end of the show on the Bataclan, for the 13th of November 2015, for today, the 10th anniversary. Welcome Arthur, thank you for being here. Thank you very much.

To finish with you, you are the president of the association, we say Life for Paris.

We say it however we want. We put a name in a lot of foreign victims? There are a lot of foreign victims. At Bataclan, it was a concert of an Anglo-Saxon group. The English like a little bit of Eurostar, a little cool party in Paris.

And so, I don't know how many there are, maybe about fifty. Ah, still!

And then there must have been some in some bars and on some terraces, a the less numerous terraces. But yeah, it was attacks that also hit foreigners in Paris.

And the association still exists, it will be 10 August, I think. You kept it for about ten years, so we're getting to 10 years today. You had another story, you were at the Bataclan that night.

You went to the concert alone?

Yeah, I went to a lot of concerts, so sometimes you go with people. Sometimes you know you're going to meet friends, but you don't plan to go with them. So I went there alone that night. It was the first of four shows in a row that I had to do in Bataclan. We saw Stéphanie earlier who went alone, it happens. We do shows together, alone, when there's no one, we still go.

Yeah, and when we do a lot, we always find the same people. Oh, really? I knew about ten people. We just didn't agree to go together. OK, OK. It's pretty quiet. You can go to a concert in Paris. If you like a genre of music, you always meet the same people.

That's funny. You planned to go, you bought tickets, because you were offered tickets,

and you heard stories about Benjamin at the start of the show. Yeah, I liked this band a lot, they'd already been in June, and I wasn't in Paris in June I wasn't in Paris. So I really took my place for this one, thinking I'd like to see the tour of this album. And the Bataclan was a room I liked a lot. I had already seen them in this room a few years before.

So no, I wasn't going to miss that.

What's going to happen for you? How are you going to live it on your side?

Are you going to arrive on time, very early?

How does it work? I arrived on time. I like to go to the first games, sometimes there are really nice things. But the first game, you can arrive 10 minutes before. So I aimed to arrive 10 minutes before the first game, it was sunny, Bataclan is still super easy to go there, very simple evening. I arrived, I had to get a beer at the bar, and I sat down to watch the first game in the pit. I was told it was very good, it was indeed very good. You're an insurer, I didn't say you were an insurance specialist.

We're going to be very broad, but there you go.

How old are you? I'm 39. So you were 29 at the time, 10 years ago.

Exactly, I was young.

What's going to happen when you go to the concert?

The evening usually goes like this, when you go to drink a beer, between the first part and the main concert, you stop at the toilet. It seems like a detail, but when you see the rest of the evening, it's not. When I get out of the toilet, the room is super full. I really wonder if I should stay near the bar,

or if I should make the effort to annoy 150 people to go to the pit where I was. That's what concerts are about. I try to sneak up to the back of the pit. For those who like music, it's usually the place where the sound is best,

because you're next to the mixing console. So the guy who mixes, he hears the same thing as you. And the concert starts. I was going to say, great concert. A good band, a good room, a good atmosphere. Not death metal at all.

I don't know if the others have already said it, but it's like Rolling Stones.

So it's pretty fun.

Some people told us rock, others hard rock, others metal, so we're a little...

No, no, it's... Anyway, you just have to go on any platform to listen. No, it's the Rolling Stones, a little more muscular, but... But very relaxed, very mixed audience, half-man, half-girl, not at all testosterone.

Are you married?

Yes, I'm married.

Do you have children?

I have three children, but they were all born after. Born after, ok. So you were single at the time?

No, I was married at the time, but my children were born after.

Ok, so with the same wife?

Exactly, yes.

I'm asking all the questions to understand the situation. Especially since there were a lot of victims who had trouble keeping their couple intact afterwards. It's not my case. And so you, your wife, knew you were there? I proposed to her to come. And she came to some concerts and not to others, so she was at a friend's. And so no, I was alone in my pit. And then the concert usually goes on until I hear a kind of crackling noise.

So there are concerts where there is pyrotechnics, so it can happen, but I knew it wasn't the kind of band, so I take off my earplugs. You're wearing earplugs? Yeah, when you play a lot of concerts, you try to protect your ears. And there I clearly hear what looks like automatic gunfire coming from behind me on the right. And so I turn around and I see, when you shoot with a Kalashnikov or a FAMAS, there's a flame coming out of the barrel. So I see the flame coming out of the barrel and I understand that there are guys shooting.

And before I have time to do anything, I find myself thrown to the ground by a crowd. And so you find yourself caught in a sandwich between people who crush you and people who crush you. In a nutshell, the people who crushed me were lighter than me, so I managed to get my mobility. And there, there's something in my brain that makes me say,

you have to get out of here quickly. No heroism, you're not going to go fight, you're not going to... And you're not going to stay there, and you're not going to get up and take a bullet. And so, when you do the sum of all that, I said to myself, you have to crawl to the nearest emergency exit. And so I patiently waited to crawl to the emergency exit.

But the guys were behind you?

The guys were behind me on the right.

So they saw you?

I imagine they saw me, but from afar. Between them and me, there must have been, in a direct line, 30 or 40 people, like everywhere in the room. On the other hand, for me, it was clear that if I got up again, there was a greater chance that they would see me. They see you and shoot you in the back. And so I did as we do in war movies, I crawled.

And so I waited to have the opportunity to get to the emergency exit, which had to take 5 to 10 minutes. Still? Yeah, because in fact, in front, you have a security barrier, and you have a little bit of a strangling you can reach the emergency exit, so... The people who got up and went to hide there, they had to wait for them to pass.

Fuck...

And so I took 5 to 10 minutes to manage to crawl until I found myself in the street that was on the side.

And you, for 5 to 10 minutes, you hear shots, always randomly?

So, the answer is yes, you hear a lot of things. At the moment, your brain blocks a little bit everything, anyway. From the moment my brain had decided, I mean my brain, not me, that this was the strategy to follow, I think there were a lot of stimuli, sound, olfactory stimuli, that were completely blocked. Then, with the shrink, I managed to find memories of those moments,

but there was only one thing that mattered to me, it was not to get up and reach the emergency exit. It's pretty strange, you're going to test areas of your brain that you've never tested before. Activated. Yes, and that you wish to never reactivate again.

So you manage to get out of there?

I manage to get out and I find myself, it's very weird, suddenly in the street. It's in a small room and so the emergency exit is not, I arrive in a technical corridor. But a door is in the street. Literally, you're under the stars, Saint-Amelot street, which is this classic little Parisian street. And at that moment, your brain starts working again. And you're thinking, what am I going to do now? And so you're in a passage,

either you go left or you go right. And so you're thinking, well, on the left, I'm going back to the entrance of the room, the guys who were shooting seemed Metal, who is there. The guy looks even more lost than we all do. And when he thinks about it, the guy must have left his tour bus,

he doesn't speak a word of French, he points to the stage so that his audience gets shot at. So I'm going to see him and I tell him in English, I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but I can take you to safety, I'm from Paris. And we get joined by the singer, his girlfriend and one of the guitarists of the band. And we all run away in the passageway, thinking, where are we going? We run for a long time, we pass in front of bars, we shout to people, be careful, there's an attack, hide! People look at us like we're really...

They didn't understand yet, the outsiders didn't know. No, no, no, no one knew at that time. And so, we arrive on the big boulevard, which is here, which is the Beaumarchais boulevard, and I put them in a taxi, giving them 50 euros, and telling the driver, go to 36, which is Des Orphées. and I get a taxi 3 minutes later. You know, you're completely elsewhere.

And I get a taxi 3 minutes later, to which I say, turn around, turn around, there's an attack, the guy didn't understand anything either. And I manage to join my wife, and I'm going to get her back,

and I go home past the end of the evening.

You go home, ah, you don't go to 36th street?

No. No! 36 Quai des Orphées is where the police is, the headquarters of the BRI, I think.

Honestly, I just wanted to go fuck put yourself in a place where you feel safe. So you go back home, it's going to happen a few days,

and it's the days after that you realize that you're a victim and that you're a survivor. Yeah, actually...

It took me some time, so in the end, I did like all French people,

I watched the assault live on TV or on a tablet, and I had the impression of getting out of there feeling like a witness.

Clearly, I didn't go far from the accident or the tragedy, but I had three blues on my hands to put my feet on,

and that was the end of the story.

And then, there was a moment when I saw a picture of me

in the Bataclan pit that appeared in English newspapers. And there, something in my brain was shining. There was a moment when I said to myself, wait, but...

In fact, the thing we've been talking about for days and days, I was really there. It seems strange to say now, but your brain has the ability to try to classify the events that bother it, which is pretty crazy, and that you discover at that moment. So at that moment, I need to stop, and I go ten days to the countryside, to get drunk, and I come back when there is a great national tribute to the disabled. It's the first time they read all the names in the alphabetical order. And so, there's a moment when they arrive... People who died, you mean?

Exactly. You see, the list, no one had ever read it publicly. And so, there's a moment when you see, where would Desnouveaux be? Have mercy.

And so, I tell myself, well...

Desnouveaux is your family.

Exactly. So I'm not dead. And I thought, well, that must be it, mourning. I think that from now on, things will progress naturally. And in fact, the reality is that I couldn't sleep. Rather, I managed to fall asleep, I woke up at 2-3 in the morning with my brain running at 100 km per hour. And so, at the end of December, I'm going to see a doctor who tells me, well, yeah, it's called a trauma.

And so, you're going to take like a victim at the end of the year, early 2016. Before that, I had the impression of being a bit of a lucky witness who hadn't gone far, but hadn't been shot.

To finish the show, there were liars, myths, the Bataclan myths. Did you unmask any?

I unmasked three. How did you unmask some? I was there when we unmasked several others. I unmasked a little more than three. There are three that ended up in court. But I was there for six, if you look at it. Did you have some thiefs who wanted money and then maybe...

There are several categories of thieves. But those who are the most dangerous and who take the most time to unmask, are those who infiltrate associations. And the three of us who were from that profile, were both scams that already had a past of scams. They were people who could have been there on November 13th, that is, who lived above one of the bars, who went to lots of rock concerts,

and they were people who were looking for friendship. And in fact, in a victim group that's created like that, we're of absolute benevolence. You only get people who are not doing well, who have a little weird speech. And so, you make friends with people

where, in a normal context, your radar would turn off.

You would have been like...

They're a little weird and all. And so, the three of them, it was the same profile. They wanted money, they wanted friendship, and then they considered that they were so close to the event that they could have been there. And so it's really hard, because they're being denounced, as I'm the president of the association,

and I look at them and every time I say to myself, yeah, it might be a false victim, but maybe not, actually. Maybe it's just someone who has a trauma that they don't want to talk about. And so there's a moment when place who has all the traits of a false victim. Can you do some discreet checks? Because there's still a small chance that I'm wrong.

And in fact, all of a sudden, they were real false victims.

Incredible! Do you tell them?

No. For those we caught in this context, it's the police who will get them back at some point, who put them in custody, and, for once, they get temporary detention. However...

Some of them went to prison.

The three of them went to prison. One of them took five years. They were people who already had a locket and were in a recidivism. On the other hand, we caught fake victims who didn't try to rob the state and not touch money, who just robbed friendship.

And so, those had to tell them, but in fact, your story is false, no? And so they leave. That's it. But the worst in the story... But that doesn't deserve to go to jail, it's just more pathetic, it's sad. One, it's pathetic. Two, there is no criminal qualification. The others, it's only because they have swindled money from the state and organization. But you know, the the police catches them,

I have to call the families and tell them, you know, it's been years since you thought the last mothers were like that. In fact, the person who told you that, she lied to you. And that, I can tell you, is a call for difficulty. You prepare for it, but the violence of what you announced is just incredible.

Well... I've never heard these stories. There was a series on the subject with Laure Calamy, called A Friend of the Whales. It was in 2024, which tells the story of a Bataclan myth. There were several, apparently. Did you know this girl?

Yes, of course. I denounced her. And she was working for the association. So I denounced her at the same time, and I managed her for the three months that the investigation lasted, pretending not to know anything, since she was lying to us. I pretended to listen to her, she complained about her working conditions,

she said it was hard, and I knew that, by the way,

she had swindled the state of several tens of thousands of euros.

And she was strong in lying, it was credible, that's why there was a media coverage around this girl. What was so special about her? Listen, what's very strange is that she's not a crime genius. She's not incredibly intelligent. She was just very plausible. She was tattooed, she knew the universe. She told you things that were very average.

And so, in fact, you thought, well, yeah, it's possible. No, it wasn't extreme. It was really someone you could leave in a corner, who talked to people around him, but who didn't try to be noticed. She even managed to get hired by the association. It was a big problem,

because I had to get access to all sensitive documents from people,

and that was 3 months of hard juggling.

What did you think of the movie? I only watched the beginning. I found it... I would say unpleasant. To watch? Yes, because there's a guy who plays me. The guy with my clothes.

The guy with the beard. And then there's a part of the people in the association who are played. And every time I was just in a register of

Oh, but that's true. oh no, they invented that, oh but that... »

Ah yes, because it's always romantic.

Exactly. On the other hand, very well done. And I remember that in the first two episodes that I watched, moments that were very fair on what is a victim assault. This thing where you come back to life because the others are pulling you a little, you see, gradually, towards the desire to party,

And then, to finish, I saw, for the trial...

you will ask the justice to spread the images.

justice normally shows everything, including horrible things, including things that don't respect the dignity of the victim, but it's for the judicial reality. And we get to this trial, and we're told, well, there's a soundtrack from the Bataclan, but we're not going to play it. Then there are photos of corpses and terrorists exposed to the Bataclan,

but we're not going to broadcast them. On the other hand, come, people from the Bataclan, to the bar and tell us what happened to you. You're thinking, well, that's a bit strange. And then I say, well, I'm president of an association, we're ready, we want justice to be done normally. And then the president of the Court of Assis says to me, well, actually, no, because you're risking

a new trauma, look at the images of your f***ing wife. But we know what happened to us, we know if we feel ready to look at them or not. And it was a long arm to do with the court to have the right to look at them, and just the right to what happens, like in any trial, that the November 13 trial does not take place differently from the others. And so it's not for unpleasant pleasure that I wanted to see these images or that I wanted to hear the sound, It was just to say what happened to us, and treat it like any other judicial case. A little more violent, a lot more deaths, but it has to be the same.

It was a way to give our dignity back to us,

for once.

Do you think that it changed anything in the judgment afterwards, the fact of voice, because... If there had been a popular jury, it might have played in favor of the accused. Here, for once, it's professionals who judge, and the professionals, they already had access to the file. They already had access to it. Yeah, that's where there was a lot of hypocrisy. It's that, in fact, everyone could have seen them. And typically, I was the one who made the image selection.

So, I was busy looking at all the images of dead people that were in the file to say, I think that this one, that one, that one, we can show them, there are a few hundred. A few hundred?

Is it okay to print that with your eyes? Because, you know... I think what's hard is when it happens to you and you're not prepared.

Before watching them, I conditioned myself several days before,

saying, you're going to see these things, you shouldn't print them, you just have to ask yourself the question at the same time,

each time, is it showable,

is it not showable in the audience room, can it shock parents in mourning, and so on.

And so you look at them with an eye that is not your eye,

which is a hyper-mechanical eye.

There is really a preference.

Like a policeman...

That's what the operators of the RED told me,

when you tell them, don't go out traumatized.

The guys told me,

there's like a switch that turns when you go into operation. In those moments, we are focused on action. And so, it's not the same memory that imprints. On May 5, 2024, one of your friends, Fred DeWilde, who is one of the survivors of the Bataclan attack,

he was killed.

I think there were three, if I'm not mistaken,

survivors who killed themselves afterwards.

So, there are three survivors who killed themselves.

There is one where the family does not consider it to be linked to November 13th. So, we count 132 deaths at the moment. There are really two suicides that are linked almost exclusively to November 13th. And my friend Fred, whom I saw a few days before at a concert, and I'm going to say the same thing as all the friends of the suicide, I saw no signs of a runaway. But above all, he had written comics, he had done a lot of things around November 13th, and so we had the impression that he was keeping his trauma relatively at a distance. And that opens up a huge abyss.

Because post-traumatic stress, even if you feel good in your skin, you are told that it can come back 5, 10, 20, 30 years later, even if you were well throughout the period. And so, you see, it raised the first question, to know if we can one day consider ourselves healed. The second question is that when he died, there was a lot of press coverage.

And the press coverage was sad, but in the end, is it surprising? No one seemed surprised that someone who had seen such horrors could follow. And that's the same, you wonder a little, you wonder if we missed something. Will we one day be considered normal people

to bet on for the future? These are big questions. When we arrived at the funeral, we were all in shock.

You could feel that we were all asking ourselves these questions.

Did it make you write a book?

Yes, precisely.

About Fred Doyle.

When I went to the funeral, I was asked to say a few words, as a friend and as president of ASSO. And the main thing I wanted to say to Fred was, you're annoying. You're annoying, you're annoying.

And, in fact, there are a lot of people who told me, but there is a book to write on this subject, on all the questions it raises, on all the damage it causes. And so I wrote a book called Living After the Bataclan,

which talks about what it's like when you're a victim of living after,

but also how hard it is to live in a society that's traumatized

by the same event that traumatized you. It's the case of November 13th.

You talk to anyone in the street on November 13th,

they know what they were doing,

they say it's so hard, where they were, and so on. And so it's really hard to heal from it when the people you want to talk to don't do so well either. And so the book is about that.

How does a society heal from all that?

What should be done, to finish, for the victims of terrorism in France? Do you think there's something missing?

What should be done?

Honestly, I'm not going to spit on the French system. We can do better in everything, so it's interesting to know. No, I think that for big attacks, we do well. There are small attacks, where there are only one or two deaths, that we tend to forget. And that's very hard for them. Because otherwise, we are well compensated, justice works well,

the media are rather... you see, very interested in the subject. No, I think we all have a collective effort to make, which is just to say to ourselves, we have to accept that it takes a lot of time for people to heal, and we have to accept that we don't know everything, and that if we know a victim,

we send them a little text message, for example, for November 13th, in the morning of the 13th, telling them, I'm thinking of you.

And then, when we see them, tell them how they're doing, actually. that you need. You said you have several children? Yeah, I have three. You have three since, because you didn't have any before. Yeah. How old are they? No, they're six, four, two. And that's my big question. It's much easier to talk about it

than to know how I'm going to talk about it. You'll show them the video later? Well, probably. But when is the later? And it's one of the big questions that I'm dealing with, because the 6-year-old one, she starts to understand violence, injustice, she understands what war is. And, in fact, it's much harder to go and tell your child in private that you almost went through it

and that you're not invincible, than to go and tell it to...

To adults?

What's that? Your 100 million subscribers? And that's a real question that worries me a lot. Because you think, the day I'm going to tell her, she's going to have a few nightmares, is that giving a victory to terrorists? And you see, when you're victorious, you really want to give them zero victory.

Have you been able to talk to terrorists?

No, well, when I went to the trial, at the bar, I obviously said things that were addressed to them. You can tell them to answer in a certain way when they talk afterwards, but it's not restorative justice, in the sense that you're not face to face telling yourself how we're doing it. You talk, three months later, it's up to him to answer questions,

your lawyer can ask questions, and so on. But I still heard them enough for them to answer the meager questions I had. What can we wish you to end this show? We can wish me to be happy, I think. One, to be happy, and two, to have things in life that are important enough

so that you want to die for them. It may seem stupid, but when you almost die, you say to yourself I want to live intensely every day.

And I wish everyone the best.

You have three daughters?

Yeah, three daughters.

I'm very lucky.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much, Guillaume.

Thank you for coming. I'll put the link to take the book if you want.

There's a link for the association, but it's useless, it's dissolving today.

It's going to dissolve, so if you can think of us on the 13th, it will make us very happy.

Thank you very much for following this special show today on the 10th of November 2015. We wanted to make an exceptional show, today we wanted to tell this day. It's important not to forget what's happening, to talk about it. So everything that happened around the Bataclan, around November 13th in general, with different points of view, different people who lived this day differently, who were all in the same place. You go to events like this, to commemorations,

you meet people you've seen, you've lived with, and you thanked police officers too. You met police officers again?

I've met a lot of people from the BRI, people from the RAID, and I know well Mathieu Langlois and Jean-Michel Fauvergne. So there's a fraternity of people who must have been a mother of this evening in this room. In any case, thank you to the whole team for preparing the show with me, for working on this show.

We meet three times a week, every Wednesday, every Friday and every Sunday on Les Gentes for interviews, documentaries. Thank you for subscribing, you are about 150,000, 200,000 to subscribe every month to our YouTube channel, it helps us a lot, know it you today. It allows us to have a lot of stories from that moment. Thank you for being so many to follow us on Podcast Audio, on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts.

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I kiss you and we'll see you very soon on Legends. I kiss you and we'll see you very soon on Legends.

Bye everyone! so Thanks for watching guys!