Marc Trévidic was born in 1965 in Bordeaux, France, to a Breton father and a Basque mother. After studying law, Trévidic attended the French National School for the Judiciary in Bordeaux, which is responsible for the education and training of the magistrature (judges and public prosecutors). Trévidic acquired his first professional experience as an examining magistrate in Péronne, and was subsequently appointed deputy prosecutor in Nantes in 1992. A change of career that brought him to Paris led to his specializing in anti-terror cases, which he tried from 2006 to 2015 as an examining magistrate at the High Court of Paris. Beginning in 2008, for example, he investigated the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana in April 1994, which triggered the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. A 2012 final report published by Trévidic, together with fellow judge Nathalie Poux, found that Habyarimana’s airplane was not shot down by rebel fighters led by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, but by a rocket launched from his own camp.
One year earlier Trévidic had published the book »Au cœur de l’antiterrorisme« (tr. At the heart of terrorism), which provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his work – from traveling under heavy guard to interrogations in secret prisons at the other end of the world – while describing his rollercoaster ride of successes and disappointments. In »Terroristes: Les 7 piliers de la déraison« (2013; tr. Terrorists: the 7 pillars of unreason) Trévidic grappled with the conditions under which normal youths becomes adherents to jihad; according to the French news magazine »Le Nouvel Observateur«, this book succeeds in balancing the secrecy required in the struggle against terrorism with his goal of informing and enlightening the public. His following book, »Qui a peur du petit méchant juge?« (2014; tr. Who’s afraid of the mean little judge?) again examines the judiciary and its societal responsibility, from the French Revolution to today. In 2016 Trévidic published his first novel, »Ahlam«, which is set in Tunisia in the years before and during the Jasmine Revolution and describes how freedom – of art as well – is threatened by the emergence of radical Islamism. The author uses background knowledge he acquired through many investigations to make accessible to the reader the creeping indoctrination of one of his characters, who undergoes a change of personality in the process.
Since 2015 Trévidic has been deputy chief of the district court in Lille, in 2016 he received the Prix de la Maison de Presse.