Eleven defendants accused of aiding the militant Islamist attackers who killed twelve people in and around French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office in 2015 testified in a French court Wednesday. Three other defendants in the trial – Hayat Boumedienne, Mohammed Belhoucine, and Mehdi Belhoucine – are being tried in absentia after having fled the country.
The court will examine the assault on Charlie Hebdo, targeted by Islamic extremists after it published cartoons mocking Islam and depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi stormed Charlie Hebdo’s office, killing twelve people and wounding eleven others. The attackers identified themselves as belonging to Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and, according to survivors of the attack, stated that they were “avenging the Prophet.” A third attacker, Amedy Coulibaly, killed a policewoman and four hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris. The Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly were killed in subsequent standoffs with the police before they could be apprehended.
The trial of their alleged accomplices will hopefully provide greater insight into the tragedy and the events leading up to it. The defendants individually face a variety of charges, including providing logistical aid to the assailants by supplying weapons and financing terrorism. Regis de Jorna, the presiding judge of the trial, also noted during the trial’s first day that a spokesperson for AQAP has praised the Kouachi brothers for avenging the Prophet and killing Islam’s worst enemies.
There are around 200 plaintiffs in the trial, and survivors of the attacks are scheduled to testify. Anti-terror prosecutor Jean-François Ricard told France Info radio that the prosecution “is about individuals who are involved in the logistics, the preparation of the events, who provided means of financing, operational material, weapons [and] a residence. All this is essential to the terrorist action.”
Controversially, Charlie Hebdo has also chosen to recirculate the satirical cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in a new issue the same day of the trial, stating that it is “‘unacceptable to start the trial’’ without showing the ‘pieces of evidence’ to readers and citizens.” The headline of the issue reads “Tout ça pour ça,” All that for this.
