In December 1985, Georges Courtois was in the dock of a Nantes courtroom, accused of armed robbery. What no one could imagine was that within minutes he would stop being the defendant and become the master of the room.
His accomplice, Abdelkarim Khalki, burst into the courthouse firing into the air. He disarmed five court officials and handed Courtois and his co-defendant Patrick Thiolet the confiscated Magnum .357 pistols and a hand grenade. Judges, jurors, and journalists slid under the tables. A reporter taken hostage described it this way: “It was a surreal moment when the kidnappers became the magistrate and the jury”.
Courtois chained himself to the presiding judge, Dominique Bailhache, brought him in front of the national television cameras, and used his wrist to denounce the French judicial system. At one point he went out onto the balcony and fired at the group of journalists, destroying the camera lens of a BBC reporter. The reporter himself said that Courtois “was not shooting at anyone in particular — he was shooting at anyone who was in sight”.
The crisis lasted 34 hours and ended on the runway at Nantes airport, where the kidnappers released their last hostages and surrendered. As police escorted him away in handcuffs, Courtois looked at the cameras and smiled: “We chose the best solution”. No one had been injured.