What happened? 
On 9 September, the trial began against those accused in the 2015 terrorist attacks that had left 130 people dead and 350 injured in central Paris and Saint-Denis. The court is going to weigh on the pleas of the 20 accused, including Salah Abdeslam, the mastermind behind the attack.  While 14 of the accused face trials in person, six more are being tried in absentia.
 
What is the background? 
First, six years since the terror attack. In 2015 attackers killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more in coordinated shootings and suicide bombings at the Bataclan concert hall, a sports stadium, and bars and restaurants across the French capital. In the six years prior to the trial, France has witnessed more such terror attacks which have marked a shift in the collective consciousness of the society. The Nice truck attack of 2016 was equally lethal with 86 killed. The January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks to the beheading of Samuel Paty in 2020, these attacks have only reminded France that anyone and anybody could come under a terror attack. 
 
Second, trial as a symbolic gesture of collective memorialisation and healing. Symbolically the trial is the moment where facts could be examined, the ferocity of the act is acknowledged and the victims get justice if not compensation for the loss. One of the primary virtues of a trial is to situate the facts in order to understand exactly what happened. The trial comes in the backdrop of similar hearings of those accused in the Charlie Hebdo terror attack and the Christchurch attack in New Zealand. It is an important step towards the beginning of memorialization of the event at the individual as well as at the societal level. In this the role of the Judiciary as an institution to identify and open pathways for healings is significant. 
 
Third, the profile of the accused or the attackers. The attacks in 2015 were planned in Syria and carried out by Europeans who had joined ISIS and were able to travel back and forth undetected with the flow of migrants. The attackers were mostly French and Belgian citizens, born in Europe to immigrants from North Africa. Similar has been the ethnic background (that is second to third-generation immigrants) of the attackers who killed Samuel Paty, bombed the office of Charlie Hebo, or wielded the knife in Nice.

Fourth, France’s own war on terror at home. In the past year, the state institutions have not only responded heavily in cracking down the financial routes of the small franchisee-terrorist groups but have also passed new anti-terrorism legislation that gives police extended powers to search homes and make house arrests without prior judicial approval. Religious sites deemed radical can now be closed down. And a social questioning or puritan screening has begun on who is a French in France? The French model of identity is steeped in civic nationalism over recognizing the diverse ethnolinguistic identity thereby making the minorities invisible in the French society. 
 
What does it mean? 
The trial will add to the existing social caveats of divisions within the migrant groups. The intra and inter-group cohesion in French society have never been simplistic. And the trial puts a check on what it means to practice violent radical attacks but how much will it facilitate a social dialogue on why Islamic extremism could become a trend in France is still in doubt. On the other side of the spectrum where lensing and seeing the act of one Muslim man as the burden of a whole ethnoreligious community is also painfully problematic and marks the beginning of a social perception bordering on social exclusion.