The broadcasting of violent and sensitive videos in terrorism-related court cases is frequently the subject of debate. On Tuesday, February 18, the second day of the Paris trial of five men accused of the kidnapping and torture of Western hostages in Syria in connection with the Islamic State (IS) group, two video sequences were due to be screened. The footage was intended to illustrate an investigator's account of the abuse suffered by the hostages held by the jihadist group between 2012 and 2014. The first was shown, but not the second.

The footage played was a montage of excerpts from CCTV cameras at the hospital in Aleppo that IS transformed into a makeshift prison. It was provided by a German NGO, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), which collects evidence of human rights violations. The original document contains 2,860 hours of footage shot between November and December 2013, of which only a few minutes have been edited.

The Aleppo hospital was the first prison in which most of IS's 25 Western hostages, including four French journalists – Nicolas Hénin, Didier François, Edouard Elias and Pierre Torres – had been rounded up at the start of their imprisonment, between June and August 2013.

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