The Islamic State terrorists who attacked the Bataclan theater in Paris last November not only killed scores of innocents — they also gouged out the eyes and sliced up the genitals of some of the victims, according to testimony in a disturbing French report.
Some victims’ bodies from the second floor of the theater had been beheaded, eviscerated and otherwise mutilated, according to two secondhand accounts reported to a parliamentary commission set up to investigate the attack.
The investigation’s chair, conservative lawmaker Georges Fenech, complained to the commission that details of the mutilations have been kept from families and the press, according to an online transcript.
He also said he had heard of one especially grievous account: The father of one victim had told him that his son had been disemboweled and castrated, with his testicles found in his mouth.
“They had cut off his testicles,” Fenech said during testimony.
French law-enforcement officials who also testified for investigators insisted, meanwhile, that there was no evidence that victim injuries were caused by anything other than gunfire and shrapnel.
One official, Michel Cadot, the prefect of police in Paris, stressed that no knives were recovered from the scene.
“Some of the bodies found at the Bataclan were extremely mutilated by the explosions and weapons, to the point that it was sometimes difficult to reconstruct the dismembered bodies,” said investigator Christian Saint.
But Fenech stood by his account. “Someone put his testicles in his mouth,” he said.
The torture allegations surfaced in March during some 200 hours of testimony before an investigative committee of the French National Assembly.
The investigation found a lack of coordination among European intelligence agencies, which failed to prevent coordinated attacks that left 130 dead at six locations in and near Paris.
“The bodies have not been shown to the families because they are people who are decapitated, people who are bloated and people who have been disemboweled,” one police witness told officials, according to the transcript.
When Fenech asked if the mutilations would have been videotaped by the terrorists, the witness answered, “It seems to me.”
“There are people decapitated, swollen and disemboweled. There are signs of sexual acts committed against women and knife cuts to genitals. If I am not mistaken, some of the eyes of certain people have been removed,” the witness said.
The witness was later asked by Fenech how he had come to learn of the acts of barbarism. He answered that he himself had only witnessed bodies struck by bullets, on the ground floor.
But he learned the gruesome details from another investigator, whom he found vomiting and crying after seeing the carnage upstairs, he told investigators.
“After the assault, we were with our colleagues at the Saint-Pierre-Amelot corridor when I saw an investigator leaving in tears, who was just about to throw up,” the police witness said.