At trial of Nice attack, pain and difficulties of foreign victims

The fourth week of audience has helped to hear the testimony of several civil parties from Ukraine, Sweden or Australia to tell their July 14, 2016 and its consequences.

by

Anneli Kruusberg came specially from Tallinn, Estonia, to talk about his son Rickard, Olena and Mykola Bazelevsky from Odessa (Ukraine) to pay tribute to theirs, Mykhaylo. Two boys who died at the age of 21 and 22, on July 14, 2016, on the Promenade des Anglais, far from their family. For her part, Sanchia Lambert, 44, “hesitated a lot” because she and her companion, John, having dodged the truck, got away with it “without the slightest scratch”, but she finally made the trip from Stockholm (Sweden) to come and tell his “invisible scars”. Adelaide Stratton, 28, which had to be repaired, repairing the body in tatters, for its part, wanted to travel 16,000 kilometers by plane from Sydney (Australia), just like her big sister, Jemima, And his parents, Chantelle and David, to be there, at the helm of the Assize Court specially composed of Paris.

The fourth week of the Nice attack, from Tuesday, 27 to Friday, September 27, underlined one of the peculiarities of this dossier with regard to the victims: its international dimension. Of the 86 deaths of the Promenade des Anglais, 33 were foreign, of ten different nationalities, tourists or students in an exchange program, often – more than a third, a greater proportion than during the attacks of November 13. Moreover, the webradio, which allows civil parties to follow the audience remotely, is broadcast abroad and benefits from an English translation service, which was not the case during “V13”.

These foreign victims, direct or indirect, have all laid down at the helm for a long time, more than the average – too much, sometimes, to the taste of the president of the court, Laurent Raviot -, as if not to have crossed Europe or The planet for nothing. The time devoted to translation, sentence after sentence, by performers not always at the level, has certainly extended their words, but it is above all that they had special things to say. “As international victims, we have a unique trauma,” summed up Jemima Stratton, Adelaide’s sister.

Many administrative meanders

Obviously, living or coming from elsewhere does not exempt from the usual consequences of an attack. Like many civil parties, Adelaide Stratton is now “hypervigilant” and “always looks where the closest exit is located”, wherever it goes; Sanchia Lambert experienced the “guilt of the survivor” and “panic crises”; Relatives of deceased victims will remain haunted by the vision of a damaged body seen in the morgue. Post-traumatic stress, depression, sorrow know no borders and are available in all languages.

You have 63.46% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports.