Pleasant Attack: Most civil parties declared eligible, including “Babies Are Made”

From what moment and from what place can someone be recognized as a victim of an attack? Five months after the criminal trial of the July 14, 2016 attack that killed 86 people and injured more than four hundred on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, a specially created social court in Paris answered this burning question. Friday, May 26.

In a civil decision, he accepted the vast majority of 2,542 requests for the constitution of civil parties, which include direct victims (those present on the spot) as well as their relatives, and rejected 337 of them. Low, the number of people dismissed, however, is higher than during the trial of the November 13, 2015 attacks , known as “V13”, where only 46 civil parties out of 2,364 were declared ineligible.

This difference is partly explained by the modus operandi of the Nice attack and the difficulty of defining its perimeter. Shortly after 10.30pm that evening, the terrorist drove his 19-tonne vehicle into the crowd as he drove onto the pavement of the southern carriageway of the Promenade des Anglais, while an estimated 25,000 people lined the seafront to watch the fireworks. The deadly truck race, which stretched over 1,850 meters, lasted four minutes and seventeen seconds.

Expanding the attack perimeter

But do you have to be in the truck’s path to be considered a victim? The court found this perimeter too restrictive to show the full extent of the assault’s trauma. Besides “Persons directly exposed to danger”That is, those who were in the trajectory of the truck, so he recognized among them “direct victim” who, “Given the proximity to the scene of the crime, one may legitimately believe that they are exposed to an immediate risk of death or injury.”.

Thus, on certain parts of the 19-tonne trajectory, the yard extended the hazard exposure perimeter beyond the sole southern carriageway of the promenade by integrating the beaches, the stairs leading to them, and also sections of the northern road. and corner of surrounding streets. On the other hand, individuals who have become victims “Crowd Movement or Panic” outside this perimeter.

For me^e Gérard Chemla, representing seventy-five civil parties, this decision is “In the continuation of the evolution initiated by the civil hearing of the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015, which has already offered a rather broad view of the constitution of the civil party.” The V13 civil action actually targeted people who were in restaurants near coffee terraces. “These facilities could have been targeted for random or at least wide perimeter shooting.”.