Paris attacks trial given a long, hard lesson on the nature of victimhood

France's November 2015 terror trial continued on Wednesday with further final pleas from the legal teams representing the survivors and families of victims.

A court sketch shows lawyer of the victims, Sylvie Topaloff, speaking during the trial of the November 2015 Paris attacks that saw 130 people killed. AFP - BENOIT PEYRUCQ

Every day this week, the procedure at the special criminal court in Paris has been the same. One by one, the black-robed lawyers approach the bar, each reading or declaiming a brief memorial to a single victim. A human life reduced to five or six sentences. It takes one minute.

With the lights dimmed to facilitate the projection of photos of the deceased on the giant screen behind the judges, the courtroom looks and feels like a cathedral.

It is solemn and sad.

The accused men in their glass box pay rapt attention to the listing of the human qualities of the 132 people who died in the 13 November 2015 attacks, or subsequently succumbed to the grief of loss.

What is a victim?

Then, with the lights again at full power, the second part of the ritual unrolls.

Another succession of black robes, this time addressing one of the general themes agreed between the lawyers representing the survivors and bereaved, in an effort to streamline this part of the procedure.

Wednesday's theme centered on the question of victimhood.

"What is a victim?" asked the first lawyer. "A statistic. But if I say Louise, Marina ..."

Things change fundamentally when the generality becomes your daughter, your brother, your fiancée.

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Even the statistics are misleading. "We mustn't forget the victims who have made the decision not to take part in this trial. Those, the majority, who have chosen to remain silent."

Another black robe reminded the tribunal of its responsibility to the bereaved, the injured, the damaged, the traumatised.

"You have the chance to give the victims the consolation of justice, which is peace. Because that is how a society ruled by law comes to terms with disorder, with chaos.

"The journalists, the historians, the anthropologists are all working to ensure that these events are collectively remembered. Their versions will be the subject of discussion and debate.

"But there will be one incontrovertible fact, guaranteed and protected by law, and that is the verdict that you hand down."

The invisible victims

The victims were not only those carried from the scenes of the Paris attacks on stretchers, another robe reminded the court.

There were victims who survived without a scratch. Victims who spent the night on the phone, searching for news. Victims who went to help the injured.

"Just as the human body is not designed to resist bullets, the human mind is not designed to resist a confrontation with its own imminent violent death," said the lawyer explaining the insidious wounds of post-traumatic stress disorder.

And there is the incapacitating sense of guilt which so many survivors have evoked in their evidence before this court.

"Guilt is something we associate with criminals, with perpetrators," the court was reminded. "This tribunal has heard from guilty victims. Is the law upside-down?"

Some survivors are locked in the solitary confinement of that survival, we were told. They are sentenced to "life imprisonment".

The trial continues.