Toulouse. 13-November: the father of a woman from Toulouse killed in Paris testifies
This Tuesday, the father of Anne-Laure Arruebo, this Toulouse woman killed in the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, takes the floor to pay tribute to his daughter. A testimony against oblivion in the face of barbarism.
“I will speak as a father and it will be an opportunity to talk about my daughter for a balance. We will talk about terrorists and their way of acting. There, it will be about our daughter”, confided recently , Jean-Bernard Arruebo, the father of 36-year-old Anne-Laure Arruebo, killed on the terrace of the bar La Belle Equipe, in Paris, rue de Charonne, shortly after 9:30 p.m., on November 13, 2015. For this domiciled family in Quint-Fonsegrives, in northeast Toulouse, it will also be the moment, this Tuesday, October 5, to release a word after six years of suffering. The beginning of a long road to an impossible mourning. “The priority of Anne-Laure’s parents is to talk about their daughter. They are inhabited by this desire. There is also their daughter’s best friend and the head of the department where Anne-Laure worked, who will take the floor,” specifies the lawyer for the Arruebo family, Me Mathieu Riberolles. Anne-Laure, passionate about culture and travel, worked in Customs. She was seated on the terrace of the Belle Equipe when the terrorists’ bullets mowed down her like twenty other people. Since the end of September, the civil parties and especially the recapés have followed one another at the helm of the special assize court of Paris which judges until May 2022 fourteen defendants, present in the box for their responsibility in the worst terrorist attacks committed in France. , in Paris and Saint-Denis (130 dead and more than 400 injured). These victims come to the bar, united by their courage, facing President Jean-Louis Peries, their throats tight with pain. Heartbroken, legs severed. Each time, life stories that freeze the audience room in cathedral silence. Touching testimonies which freeze the court in fear in this liberating exercise.
In the box, Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of these death squads, whose brother Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire, listen to these strong tributes, these wounds that never refer.
For Anne-Laure’s father, “it is important that the truth comes out at the end of this trial, about the sponsors and what the politicians knew at the time”. An essential quest for truth to understand how a jihadist commando could have engaged in the worst carnage without these attacks, prepared from Syria, having been detected. The authorities were aware of a high risk of attack linked to Islamist terrorism in France. But they didn’t know when it could happen and had to have the targets. “I cannot believe that our daughter is at the wrong time in the wrong place. But these people had a deliberate desire to do harm,” continues Jean-Bernard Arruebo. That evening, at 9:37 p.m., the three members of the commando opened fire in bursts with Zastava assault rifles, for about twenty seconds. The killing kills 21. They are added to those who fell shortly before the Stade de France, on the terraces of La Bonne Bière, Petit Cambodge, Carillon. Just before the Bataclan massacre (90 dead). In Quint-Fonsegrives, the city’s media library now bears the name of Anne-Laure Arruebo. To never forget it.