Published date: 21 December 2020 15:43 UTC | Last update: 3 months ago
The French president is launching nothing less ambitious than a secular crusade. Not to save Jerusalem, but to save France s imaginary republican soul
French President Emmanuel Macron on 14 December (AFP)
For four years, French prosecutors strained every sinew to prove that a multinational jihadist conspiracy was behind the attacks on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
A total of 17 were killed in gun attacks that spread across three days and stunned the nation. This was France s biggest terrorist trial and yet, despite its importance, the fact that the attack on a newspaper led to a second and the likelihood that it will lead to yet more, the convictions last week left basic questions unanswered.
French Court Finds 14 People Guilty of The 2015 Charlie Hebdo Attack Published December 17th, 2020 - 08:06 GMT
This court sketch made on December 16, 2020 shows a general view at the Paris courthouse during the sentencing hearing in the trial of 14 suspected accomplices of the Islamist gunmen who murdered seventeen people over three days of attacks in January 2015, beginning with the massacre of 12 people at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Marie WILLIAMS / AFP
A French court on Wednesday found 14 people guilty of participating in the 2015 terrorist attacks at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
Eleven of the 14 defendants were present at the Special Assize Court of Paris when the guilty verdicts were announced by a panel of judges, ending a trial that lasted for more than three months.
Another defendant was Ali Riza Polat, described as the lieutenant of the anti-Semitic market attacker, Amedy Coulibaly. He was the only defendant to face a life term, and his frequent profane outbursts during the case drew a rebuke from the judge.
Several of the defendants exchanged texts or calls with Coulibaly in the days leading up to the attack.
Seventeen people were killed in the two attacks, as well as three gunmen. On January 7, 2015, 12 people were shot dead when two gunmen raided the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo before fleeing.
As the two gunmen fled, Coulibaly separately shot and killed a young policewoman after he failed to attack a Jewish community center in the suburb of Montrouge.
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This security camera video footage shows Hayat Boumeddiene, and a male travel companion arriving at Istanbul s Sabiha Gokcen airport on Jan. 2, 2015. Boumeddiene, the widow of a gunman who attacked a kosher supermarket and a police officer, killing five people before he died in a raid by security forces, was jailed for 30 years in absentia on December 16, 2020. She is still on the run. (AP Photo/Haberturk Television, File)
PARIS The fugitive widow of an Islamic State gunman and a man described as his logistician were convicted Wednesday of terrorism charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison in the trial of 14 people linked to the January 2015 Paris attacks against the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a kosher supermarket in which a total of 17 people were killed.
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