PARIS: A French court on Wednesday convicted 14 people of helping carry out the 2015 terrorist attacks on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store as France tried to close one of the most painful chapters in its modern history .
The three-day attack that killed 17 people in January 2015 marked the start of a series of terrorist attacks that would leave hundreds dead in the coming years and reform everyday life in France. The three gunmen who launched the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the shopkeeper were killed in a clash with police at the time.
On Wednesday, Paris judges handed down prison sentences to a network of people in charge of assisting the men. Three people were convicted of absence, including Hayat Boumeddiene, who married one of the gunmen in a religious ceremony before the attacks.
He received a 30-year prison sentence for belonging to a terrorist organization and financing terrorism. Ms Boumeddiene, whom prosecutors described in court as an “Islamic State princess”, fled to Syria days before the attacks. She is fleeing an international arrest warrant.
Ali Riza Polat, a 35-year-old French-Turkish man, was sentenced to life in prison for helping and inciting Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who attacked the grocery store.
“Judges don’t have to absorb some frustration for not being able to prosecute the actual perpetrators of the attacks and transfer all of those frustrations to Mr. Polat,” said Antoine Van Rie, Mr. Polat’s lawyer. He said he would appeal the verdict.
Three other suspects were convicted of terrorism charges. Seven other defendants were found guilty of misdemeanors, such as belonging to a criminal enterprise.
“We don’t want to live under the yoke of dogma,” Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer Richard Malka said Wednesday at the Paris courthouse.
Photo:
martin bureau / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
The scars of the Charlie Hebdo attack continue to appear in France. The attackers attacked the newspaper after it published cartoons with the Prophet Muhammad. The slaughter of his writing transformed Charlie Hebdo into a symbol of freedom of expression and was followed by an effusion of solidarity as people around the world adopted the cry “Je suis Charlie” or “I am Charlie” “.
As the process began, Charlie Hebdo republished the cartoons and once again provoked anger among Muslims who consider the depictions of Muhammad to be blasphemous. Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old middle school teacher, was beheaded in a terrorist attack after showing some of the vignettes in his class as part of a free speech lesson.
“We do not want to live under the yoke of dogma. We want to be free, “said Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer, Richard Malka.
The verdict came amid a government campaign against radical Islam that some Muslim leaders and human rights organizations claim runs the risk of stigmatizing the French Muslim community, one of the largest in Europe.
The government intensified its efforts following the attack on the teacher and the death of three people inside a Nice basilica this autumn. In recent weeks, authorities have closed dozens of mosques, religious associations and schools and launched polls on several dozen more.
The government also proposed legislation earlier this month to outlaw “Islamist separatism,” which the government defines as a wide range of activities, from inappropriate home schooling to online hate speech. , which aims to build a parallel society where religious norms override civil ones.
The trial, which opened in September, was suspended for about a month in November after three of the defendants contracted the coronavirus.
In this photo from January 7, 2015, firefighters carry an injured man in front of Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris after the attack on his newsroom.
Photo:
philippe dupeyrat / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
The attack on Charlie Hebdo began on January 7, 2015, when Chérif and Said Kouachi stormed Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office with AK-47 rifles. After shooting a receptionist, the two brothers reached the second floor, where journalists and cartoonists held their weekly editorial meeting. In a shooting blast, they killed eight staff members, a guest and a police officer who acted as bodyguards for the editor-in-chief of the magazine.
“We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We killed Charlie Hebdo, ”they shouted as they fled.
They ran into several police patrols and killed an officer.
A day later, a third gunman, Mr. Coulibaly, shot dead a police woman on a street in Montrouge, a suburb of Paris.
The next day, police cornered the Kouachi brothers inside a printing press northeast of Paris.
When police surrounded the facility, Mr. Coulibaly took hostages inside a grocery store, threatening to kill them if the Kouachi brothers were injured. He killed four people in the store.
The three gunmen were killed in simultaneous raids hours later. Days later, Islamic State released a video calling Coulibaly his soldier.
The al-Qaeda ramp in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on the magazine.
Days after the attack, world leaders converged on Paris, walking arm in arm as millions of Frenchmen mounted a national march to show unity against terrorist attacks.
Write to Noemie Bisserbe to [email protected]
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