How Charlie Hebdo previewed the trial. I bought two copies by mistake and will send the spare to the first person to leave a comment persuading me it should go to them
For the next two and a half months, a court in Paris will consider the various secondary roles of 14 people accused in connection with the terrorist attacks of January 2015 that left 17 innocent people dead. The trial opened last Wednesday (September 1) and is being filmed for historical archives ... This is my preview for The National ..
More than five years after attacks on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket launched an ugly new wave of terrorism in France, the trial begins on Wednesday of 14 people accused of helping the killers.
Only 11 of the defendants can be present for hearings to be held at the new criminal court at the Porte de Clichy on the outskirts of the French capital.
Three others fled to Syria shortly before the attacks. Two are presumed to have died there while fighting alongside ISIS but can still be tried because their deaths remain unconfirmed.
The grim events that unfolded between January 7 and 9 2015 shocked the world and intensified debate about blasphemy and the limits of freedom of expression.
They were followed over the next 18 months by a series of outrages in France, including the Paris massacre on November 13 2015 that left 131 people dead and a lorry attack killing 86 on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice in July 2016.
The principal characters in the interlinked dramas of those three January days in 2015 – the killers - will also be absent from the trial.
Said and Cherif Kouachi, the French-Algerian brothers who carried out the shootings that cost 12 lives at the Charlie Hebdo offices, were killed two days later in a siege at a sign-making company’s premises 40 km away in Dammarton-en-Goele.
Both had aligned themselves to Al Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) and claimed their motive was to destroy Charlie Hebdo for its previous publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
Cherif Kouachi, 32, told a French TV journalist while still besieged that it was an act of vengeance. “We do not kill women … we have an honour code in Islam,” he claimed, also suggesting that he and his 34-year-old brother did not kill civilians.
But the only non-civilians killed were two police officers, one a Muslim, Ahmed Merabet, 42, mercilessly finished off as he lay wounded on the pavement. The nine murdered journalists and cartoonists included a woman, Elsa Cayat, 54, a psychoanalyst and columnist.
During the siege, the Kouachis’ accomplice Amedy Coulibaly, 32, whom they had met in prison, seized hostages in the Hyper Cacher Kosher supermarket at Vincennes, eastern Paris. He murdered four Jewish people and seriously wounded four other people before he, too, was shot dead by police.
On the day before, with France still coming to terms with the Charlie Hebdo killings, Coulibaly had shot a Martinique-born auxiliary policewoman, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 26, in the back as she dealt with a traffic accident at Montrouge, in the southern suburbs of the capital.
Sometimes referred to as the forgotten victim of this short but ferocious outbreak of terror in and around Paris, she also died. She was due to be confirmed in her post four days later.
One theory before the court will be that Coulibaly, who declared allegiance to ISIS, may have been planning to attack Jewish children at a nearby school adjacent to a synagogue.
If true, this suggests he was inspired by Mohamed Merah, a self-styled Al Qaeda serial killer whose seven victims included three Jewish children at their school in Toulouse, south-western France, in 2012.
The Charlie Hebdo trial will be filmed for historical and judicial archives, an exceptional step previously taken for the 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon” convicted of crimes against humanity while serving as Gestapo chief in the French city during the collaborationist wartime Vichy regime.
The absent defendants include Coulibaly’s partner, Hayat Boumedienne, 32, whom he married in a religious ceremony not recognised in French law.
Once described as the world’s most wanted female terrorist suspect, she is alleged to have played a major role in planning his attacks, also running a car fraud to raise the necessary funds. Pregnant by Coulibaly, she left France, travelling to Syria via Spain and Turkey, days before the attacks.
She was reportedly killed in Syria but a woman returning from the conflict later claimed she was alive and that they had been detained together at a camp for ISIS prisoners at Al Hol, near the Syrian border with Iraq. She said Boumadienne escaped using a false identity in October, 2019.
The others being tried in their absence, Mehdi Belhoucine, 24, and his brother Mohammed, 28, were reportedly killed in combat with ISIS.
The most serious charges against those before the court are faced by Ali Riza Polat, 35, allegedly Coulibaly’s right-hand man. He is alleged to have procured weapons in Belgium as well as helping to finance the plot from the proceeds of crime.
Over the weekend following the attacks, an estimated four million people gathered throughout France in shows of solidarity with the victims. JeSuisCharlie (I am Charlie) and NousSommesTousCharlie (We’re all Charlie) became slogans and hashtags reflecting the defence of free speech.
Richard Malka, Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer, says he will be representing freedom of expression at the trial. But he believes the principle has been severely damaged and accuses the left and academia of suppressing controversial opinion for fear of offending minorities.
“For 30 years, I have been defending this newspaper, which symbolises everything the Kouachi brothers sought to eradicate,” he told the news magazine Le Point, which headlined its 18-page preview of the trial “Have the Islamists won?”.
Mr Malka, who has been under police protection since the attacks, added: “My unhappy client is therefore liberty. I fear that in the medium term it is a lost cause.”
The trial is expected to last until mid-November. The accused face sentences of between 10 years and life imprisonment if convicted.
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