Sciences Po Paris
The fifth week of the Lafarge trial, which began on 9 December before the 16th Chamber of the Paris Criminal Court, was marked by a series of testimonies of terror victims from Paris to Northern Syria. Victims of the 13-November attacks in Paris, representatives of the Yazidi community and former Syrian employees of Lafarge cement company each recounted the fateful consequences of corporate decisions made far beyond their reach. The week was also marked by the long-anticipated testimony of Jean-Claude Veillard, Lafarge's former security director, who was transmitting numerous information to the various branches of the security services.
The first two days saw the courtroom gripped by painful emotions stemming from the depositions of the victims of terrorism. They all emphasized the systematic violence perpetrated by terrorist groups was made possible by the continued flow of financing. The audience on Tuesday was transported by Camille Gardesse back to the 13th of November 2015, the day on which a wave of terrorist attacks shook Paris. She recounted the shooting, the moments of fear, and the psychological trauma that lasted years after the event. Tears were shed even by a defence lawyer. The witness kept asking herself – and with her the courtroom – what could possibly lead someone to finance and engage with terrorist groups, putting lives at risk?
Wednesday’s chilling deposition of Bataclan survivor Gaëlle Messager stilled the courtroom into a heavy silence. She described the brutal scene of violence: for two hours, she had feigned death, while scores around her, including her own partner, had been killed. That day, she said, abstract decisions had become reality: can we, she asked, directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist group knowing that it destroys and kills? The testimony of Georges Salines, member of the Association Française des Victimes du Terrorisme (French Association of Victims of Terrorism) and father of a Bataclan victim took another angle: people converting to Islam under fundamentalist Islamist radicalization. While these persons are all responsible for the choices they made, they are also victims of ISIS’s attraction and propaganda, he said. Philippe Duperron, father of another Bataclan victim and the president of the victim Association 13onze15 Fraternité et Vérité, the reality is clear: a French company consciously sacrificed all moral and ethical considerations solely in favour of profit.
From Paris to Jalabiya
Although the French Supreme Court ruled that a V13 (for Friday the 13th) victims’ association could not be recognized as “direct victims” of terrorism financing – and therefore could not be granted civil-party status – the presiding judge nonetheless allowed them to give deposition, deciding that she would rule on the status of the total of 198 civil parties at the end of the trial. This decision enabled their accounts to bridge the gap between abstract corporate decisions and their concrete consequences in France.
The civil parties deposition were not limited to the French context. On Tuesday, a representative of Yazda, an NGO documenting and addressing crimes committed by ISIS against the Yazidis, testified that financing of ISIS enabled a genocidal campaign against the Yazidi community. While it is unlikely that they will be recognized as civil parties in the French proceedings, more than 400 Yazidi-American survivors filed a lawsuit in the United States against Lafarge in 2013, seeking financial compensation for victims. This legal action became possible following Lafarge’s acknowledgment of culpability in a 2022 U.S. criminal plea agreement.
On Wednesday afternoon, the testimony of four former Syrian employees of Lafarge in Syria shifted the focus to the factory of Jalabiya. They told a common story of Lafarge’s exacerbation of their already precarious local situation. Despite some employees being kidnapped and others having to live inside the plant, Lafarge refused to suspend its operations and pressured employees to continue working.
The apparition of Jean-Claude Veillard
From the outset of the trial, one name has echoed on nearly every party’s lips: Jean-Claude Veillard, Lafarge’s security director from 2008 to 2018 – a spectral presence in the case until this week. A former French special forces officer who ran unsuccessfully for the far-right National Rally (RN) in 2014 local elections, he was indicted in 2017 for complicity in Lafarge’s alleged Syrian terror financing. Yet in 2024, Veillard was the only suspect to have all charges against him dismissed by investigative judges. During the hearing, however, the Prosecutor from the National Counter-Terrorism Office (PNAT) clearly indicated that it had intended to appeal investigating judges’ decision but chose finally not to do so to avoid further prolonging the proceedings.
At around 3:30pm on 9 December, the long-awaited witness took the witness stand in a crowded and expectant courtroom. A grey-haired man in his early 70s, dressed all in black, Veillard launched into a 4-hour testimony.
He talked about his ‘understaffed team’ of two to guarantee security for sites in over 70 countries as well as for expatriates. When asked whether the lack of personnel was compatible with the company’s alleged security commitment, he remarked that “Lafarge never indicated that security was the priority of the group”, contrary to the repeated claims of Bruno Lafont, former CEO, and Bruno Pescheux, former director of Lafarge’s Syrian subsidiary. With regards to the security situation on the ground, he noted: “I never sensed in Syria the idea of any potential improvement. If it had been up to me alone, Lafarge would have left in November 2011.” As for why the company decided not to follow his security advice, he stated: “I see it purely as a financial choice. The price of a brand-new factory couldn’t allow it to be shut down.”
The PNAT subjected Veillard to a barrage of questions, particularly about his reports to Lafarge’s security committee, which frequently referenced terrorist groups in Syria and alluded to their financing.
Yet he consistently claimed that he knew nothing about the groups’ financing until the summer of 2014 – a claim that appears surprising in light of the email exchanges, his role within Lafarge, and the fact that his communications with the security services (which were, according to him “a personal initiative”) during that period remain classified.
A bit earlier on the same day, Christophe Gomart, Member of European Parliament and former chief of French military intelligence, revealed that Veillard had met 21 times with intelligence services from 2012 to 2015 and had also reported on the security situation in Syria based on information collected from Lafarge. Gomart remarked that he had complete trust in Veillard and his intelligence sources, adding that, “from one perspective, Lafarge did provide valuable insights to counterterrorism services”. This even gave defence lawyer Solange Doumic the opportunity to imply that Lafarge contributed to the fight against terrorism, an allegation completely out of touch given the charges they are accused of.
Good characters
The week proceedings concluded with an assessment of each defendant’s personality, focusing on their personal life, studies and professional background. The defence presented witnesses to testify to the defendants’ good characters. A childhood friend of Bruno Pescheux described him as having “a great deal of humanity”, adding that “he could not imagine for a single moment that he would have put anyone in his organisation at risk”. Another of his former colleagues listed key characteristics of Pescheux’s “very human personality”: openness to different cultures, interest for his employees, high safety standards, loyalty to his company, and integrity.
While examining their assets, it was striking – if not unsettling – to hear defendants describe owning “a studio” or a flat valued at €300,000, while their wives possessed substantial assets, all conveniently held under separate marital property agreements…
One by one, the defendants emphasised their innocence, in several cases portraying themselves as the victim. “I was fired like dirt: it was a gross injustice”, stated Bruno Pescheux, whilst Jacob Waerness, former security manager at the Jalibiya plant, lamented that he “had to take odd jobs to survive”. Ultimately, the responsibility of the 8 defendants and the legal entity of their former company will be determined at the end of this week in the final proceedings of this landmark trial.
As part of the Capstone Course in International Law in Action, Professor Sharon Weill and eleven students at Sciences Po Paris, in partnership with Justice Info, are dedicated to weekly coverage of the Lafarge trial, conducting an ethnography of the proceedings. The members of this student group are Sofia Ackerman, Maria Araos Florez, Toscane Barraqué-Ciucci, Laïa Berthomieu, Emilia Ferrigno, Dominika Kapalova, Garret Lyne, Lou-Anne Magnin, Ines Peignien, Laura Alves Das Neves, and Lydia Jebakumar.
