World

14 guilty in 2015 Paris terror attacks trial

December 17, 2020
The trial has reopened one of modern France's darkest episodes, with the attacks marking the onset of a wave of militant violence that has killed scores more since. — Courtesy photo
The trial has reopened one of modern France's darkest episodes, with the attacks marking the onset of a wave of militant violence that has killed scores more since. — Courtesy photo

PARIS — A French court found guilty on Wednesday 14 accomplices of the French militants behind the January 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

Among the 14 was Hayat Boumeddiene, former partner of Amedy Coulibaly who killed a policewoman and then four people in a Jewish supermarket.

One of three suspects to be tried in absentia, Boumeddiene was found guilty of financing terrorism and belonging to a criminal terrorist network. She is thought to be alive and on the run from an international arrest warrant in Syria, where she joined Daesh (the so-called IS).

Coulibaly was himself an associate of the gunmen behind the deadly attack at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015.

Boumeddiene was handed a 30-year jail sentence while, the main accused, Ali Riza Polat, was found guilty of complicity in the terrorist crime and also given a 30-year jail term.

The accomplices were found guilty on different charges, ranging from membership of a criminal network to complicity in the attacks. Terrorism-related charges were dropped for several of the defendants who were found guilty of lesser crimes.

The three men who carried out the Jan. 7-9, 2015 attacks were killed and the accomplices, who first went on trial in early September, were accused of obtaining weapons or providing logistical support. They all denied the charges.

The trial has reopened one of modern France's darkest episodes, with the attacks marking the onset of a wave of militant violence that has killed scores more since. — Agencies

December 17, 2020
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