Huddled together at an outdoor cafe table in Paris, immersed in animated conversation, Azdyne Amimour and Georges Salines look like typical old friends. Admittedly, they’re something of an odd couple: Amimour, a French-Algerian in a flat cap, sneaks in a cigarette; Salines, a white, French retired doctor, has just locked up his bicycle and arrives in cycling gear. This is a friendship borne of extraordinary circumstances.
The date of 13 November 2015 is as deeply etched into Parisians’ memory as 9/11 is in the minds of New Yorkers. That night, six separate Islamist terror attacks occurred in Paris, killing 130 people. The most deadly of all was at the Bataclan theatre, where three gunmen opened fire on a packed crowd during a gig, killing 90 people. Salines’ 28-year-old daughter, Lola, was one of the victims. Amimour’s son, Samy, also 28, was one of the attackers.
Both men remember that time as the worst of their lives. Salines had been swimming with Lola at a public pool just that morning. He and his family spent the day after the attack phoning around hospitals and helplines, desperately looking for a sign that she was still alive. “I finally realised that she was dead,” he says. “When, two days later, we saw her body, she was very peaceful. She looked like she was asleep and we wanted to wake her up. It was a terrible experience.”
Amimour had no inkling of his son’s involvement in the Bataclan attack until police burst into his apartment two days later and took him away for questioning. Amimour didn’t even know his son was in the country. An interrogating officer informed him that not only was Samy one of the perpetrators, but he had been shot dead by French police. “He yelled this at me with such cruelty,” says Amimour. “I was shocked, I was sad, and I was angry at my son all at the same time.”
Islamic State’s key objective in its terrorist attacks across Europe was to create division, says Salines. “They had this apocalyptic ideology: ‘We must hasten the end of the world, and so we must hasten the global war between all Muslims and non-Muslims, so we are doing things that will increase hatred.’” In that respect, it arguably had some success. Islamist terrorism has fuelled the rise of anti-immigrant far-right parties across Europe. In turn, their Islamophobia likely served to push European Muslims further towards extremist groups. It is a vicious circle, says Salines.
As such, his friendship with Amimour is a small but significant attempt to break the circle and heal the divide. “I think we both felt we needed to build a friendship,” says Salines.
After the 2015 Paris attacks, many were quick to blame the parents of the attackers, accusing them of negligence or even complicity. Salines took the bold step of seeing them as fellow victims – especially Amimour. “It was clear from the very beginning that this guy had done nothing,” says Salines. “I’m familiar with a lot of jihadists’ histories, and there are many, many elements in their lives that converged to push them towards Islamic State. Parenting is a very small part of it. And all parents make mistakes.”
Amimour has asked himself if he did all he could to prevent his son going down the path of extremism, he says, but he set a positive counter-example. Having emigrated from Algeria in the 1960s, he seems to have embraced the French way of life. He is a moderate Muslim, he says. He drinks alcohol. His wife and two daughters never covered their hair. In his career he has worked in cinema, the music industry, publishing, hospitality and retail among others. He is something of an adventurer. “I have travelled to five continents, I’ve had lots of different jobs, I’ve learned 10 languages and dialects. I’m a curious person. I had a very difficult, very poor childhood, so I wanted to catch up on everything.”
Growing up, Samy appeared to be doing fine. “He was never the victim of much racism, because he had light skin,” says Amimour. He worked hard at school, he never drank or smoked, he was intelligent, he passed all his exams. I didn’t understand. It all happened so quickly.”
As a young adult, Samy became more interested in Islam. Trying to get on the front foot, his father suggested he look into studying theology and becoming an imam. But by the time Samy was 24, in 2011, he was watching videos on the internet by jihadist groups in Belgium and elsewhere. He had dropped out of his studies and become a bus driver. He stopped wearing western clothes in favour of the Arab-style qamis – a long robe. “When I saw he started to pray, I prayed as well, to keep an eye on him,” says Amimour. “I went with him to the mosque three or four times to see what the imam was saying, but it was nothing harmful.”
In 2013, Samy left for Syria with two childhood friends, and told his parents: “Don’t come looking for me.” Amimour did go looking for him, though, smuggling himself into Syria through Turkey, just as his son had. “It was dangerous,” he says. “I was sick, the food was awful, but I had strength because I wanted to bring back my son.” When he finally found Samy, Amimour was disappointed. “He was like a zombie. I couldn’t talk to him. We exchanged maybe two sentences. There was always someone watching us.”
After three days, Amimour went home to France, planning to return and try again later. “I was optimistic. I never thought I’d lost him.” It was the last time Amimour would see his son alive.
After the 2015 attacks, with journalists camped outside his door, Amimour and his wife went into hiding. Salines, meanwhile, threw himself into activity. His wife wanted to forget Bataclan altogether, he says. “She prefers to do other things, like painting. For me, it’s the exact opposite: I felt the need to act within this field. Because it makes me feel that I have transformed something bad that happened to me, and that happened to my daughter, into something which could be considered good.”
He co-founded a victims’ NGO, 13Onze15 (named after the date of the attack), and became its public spokesperson. That was how Amimour found him, Salines says over coffee. Salines thumbs through a folder of documents he has brought along. “February 16, 2017,” he says, reading a page. “Azdyne sent an email to the 13Onze15 association saying that he wanted to meet me.”
Amimour was apprehensive about making contact, he says, “because I was on the wrong side of the barrier”. But it was a gesture of compassion. “I could imagine what pain and sadness Georges was going through. So I wanted to share in that with him, but also to show him that we are not a family of terrorists.”
“I understood that very well,” says Salines, “because in April 2016 I had met with some mothers of jihadists who had left to go to Syria and I realised they were not necessarily fundamentalist Muslims. Some were not even Muslim at all. They had lost their children, they had had a very difficult time.”
Salines was familiar with the concept of restorative justice, in which victims and perpetrators of crimes are brought together, usually with beneficial results. Originally it was applied to minor crimes as an alternative to prison; now it is regularly used in the context of terrorist groups and their victims, in places such as Northern Ireland or Spain’s Basque region.
The concept of forgiveness is key, Salines says, although it is often difficult to apply in these situations. “It’s only possible to forgive the harm done to oneself; it’s very difficult to forgive the harm done to others. So since the harm was done to my daughter, it would be her privilege. But I have evolved in my conception of forgiveness. Now I think we don’t have to be too ambitious about what it means. I think it can simply mean that you no longer seek revenge. And this is a very important distinction, because it’s a way to restore the peace.”
From their first meeting both men knew they would get along, they say. “It’s been six years now,” says Salines. “I’ve learned a lot of things. We’ve spent a lot of time telling each other about our respective lives. I had a lot of questions about Samy’s youth and his radicalisation.” Amimour nods in agreement: “The main thing is to have a dialogue. I discover things about Georges; he discovers things about me. It’s been very helpful.” In 2020, Amimour and Salines turned their conversations into a book, We Still Have Words.
They have worked together on prevention strategies; talking at and holding workshops with government, schools and prisons. (The politicians tend to listen more to Salines, apparently, whereas the prisoners listen more to Amimour.)
The two of them disagree on many things, they both hasten to point out. Amimour believes in God, for example (Salines is a rationalist and an atheist). “I think God is an explanation for the things we don’t understand about the universe,” he says. At one point Amimour brings up national service, which he believes is a force for integration in French society: “Black and white, rich and poor, they’re all living together.” Salines disagrees: “We can’t expect military service to be a social service.” They often tease each other. “He has a lot of strange ideas,” says Salines.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” says Amimour, “but like General de Gaulle, I listen to all sides, then I form my own opinion. There are a lot of things we don’t see the same way but it’s completely normal, like brothers or sisters. It’s not about big things.” Salines jokes: “He thought Morocco were going to win the World Cup.”
The harm and division caused by the attacks continues to reverberate through France, and down the generations. While Samy was in Syria, he fathered a daughter with a woman he had met in France (who was 17 when she left for Syria). She also has twin boys by another father. They are all French citizens, but when it comes to matters of repatriation, politicians, victims’ groups and French society as a whole are divided. Amimour and Salines argue that they are victims, too.
A new BBC documentary, Finding Alaa, by the French-Irish film-maker Myriam François, follows Amimour on his protracted quest to locate his granddaughter, who is now seven years old, and bring her home. After years of legal efforts, in the face of institutional inertia, she finally returned to France last December, but he has still not seen or had any communication with her.
She and her siblings are with a foster family. The mother is awaiting trial. “It’s like we’ve crossed the desert and reached the fountain and now we can’t drink,” Amimour says. “We want her to live with us. We have room. But she is getting used to another family, so if we get her back, perhaps it will be too late. I hope not.”
He does not even know what his granddaughter looks like, he says. “When I go out in the street, I see children her age and I think: ‘Does she look like that? Or that? Is she big? Small? Does she look like her mother? Her father?’
“Before I was very worried about her because she was over there [in Syria], now at least I know she is safe. She is free. She is here. But there are many more children who are still there. It’s criminal. It’s inhumane.”
An estimated 150 French women and children are still in detention in camps in Syria. As with Britain’s Shamima Begum, and other European nationals, they are being treated as second-class or non-citizens at home. The approach is misguided in terms of security, says Salines, as well as for humanitarian reasons. “Particularly the children. We leave them in the hands of women who are members of [Islamic State], who tell them every day how bad France or Great Britain is. What will they do when they are adults? If we want to ensure our own safety, we have to bring those people back.”
Islamist terrorism has at least receded in Europe since 2015. Whether France or the rest of Europe has become less Islamophobic is a different matter. Salines points to the fact that far-right political groups emphasised economic problems more than immigration in last year’s presidential elections, but also to polls showing that younger people are far less Islamophobic. Amimour is less convinced, observing that while several British cities have Muslim mayors, including London, there are none to be found in France. Both agree there is still work to be done.
“The government should do more in terms of prevention of extremism and terrorism, and we should do more in terms of reconciliation and bringing people together,” says Salines. In the meantime, small gestures, such as a simple friendship between two men, can make a big difference. They called their book We Still Have Words because “if there are words left, there is also hope”, Salines says. “We have to talk about these issues. We do what we can, but sometimes it feels like trying to empty the sea with a spoon.”
Finding Alaa is on BBC iPlayer and BBC News Arabic on 9 May, and on BBC News on 13 May
• This article was amended on 10 May 2023 to correct the caption on the main image which wrongly identified Azdyne Amimour as Georges Salines and vice versa.
