I went through the door one last time. Walked up the aisle. Counted one, two, three, four rows from the back, on the right. Hesitated. Was it on this one, or the one just ahead, that I sat, tightly packed, eyes riveted to one of the 12 screens showing terror during the long months of hearings in the trial of the November 2015 attacks, which took place from September 2021 to May 2022? Two technicians were already busy unhooking them. I approached the heart of the courtroom. On the defense's desks, microphones dangled, unplugged. The wooden benches and floor did not even have time to age. An isothermal bottle was left under the clerks' desk. The judges' black chairs, in a disorderly line, had lost all their solemnity. Those of the prosecution had disappeared beneath an orange construction jacket. In a corner, the sketchers' chairs with a foldable table were waiting to be taken away. It's over.

On Monday, March 3, the dismantling of the so-called grand trial room began at the courthouse on Paris's Ile de la Cité. It had opened in September 2021. In addition to the trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015, known as V13, it hosted those of the 2016 and 2020 attacks in Nice, the attacks in Trèbes, Carcassonne, and Strasbourg, and the murder of history teacher Samuel Paty. Its ultra-secure dock also welcomed, in 2023, the robber Rédoine Faïd, tried for his spectacular helicopter escape from prison. The appeal trial of the Servier pharmaceutical group, prosecuted for selling the weight-loss pill Mediator while knowing of its harmful effects, also filled these benches.

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