‘Terrorism has no religion’: Michael Petrou from la Place de la République
At the hub of Paris’s heartache, our foreign correspondent talks to Syrian activist Mohamed Taha, who was near the Bataclan when attackers stormed it
Paris, le 16 Novembre 2015. Minute de silence à Paris, place de la République, en mémoire des victimes des attentats de Paris. Minute of silence in Paris, Place de la République, in memory of the victims of attacks in Paris. (Photograph by Cyril Marcilhacy/Cosmosphoto)
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Mohamed Taha—a Paris-based Syrian activist who has been railing against the Islamic State and Bashar al-Assad, and who was beaten for it in 2011—was having dinner near the Bataclan, the venue that was attacked on Friday. It was an assault right on the heart of Paris, on its diverse youth, that left at least 129 dead and at least 300 more wounded. In the video below, Maclean’s foreign correspondent Michael Petrou talks to Taha about what he saw as he shows us the supportive (and sometimes not-so-supportive) scrawlings at the Place de la Republique, which has become the beating heart of a city in mourning.