(Radio France) The Paris attacks trial resumed on Tuesday with the interrogation of Mohammed Amri and Hamza Attou, the two men who admit driving to Paris on the morning after the 13 November 2015 killings to bring surviving terrorist Salah Abdeslam back home to Belgium.
The contrast is striking.
Mohammed Amri is soft, round, smiling. He is patient in the face of repeated, pointless questions. He is given to gentle humour as, on Tuesday, at the expense of a lawyer he had spotted snoozing earlier in the session. “Of course you didn’t hear my answer, Maître, you were asleep.”
Hamza Attou is all nerve and sinew, never smiles, takes no nonsense from nobody. On Tuesday he warned the court president that, if the judge didn’t like Attou’s answers, he could go elsewhere. The accused was told to moderate his tone. “I will, if you stop asking the same questions in the search for the answers you want to hear.”